Confusion Surrounded CA Wildfire 9-1-1 Calls, Records Show

19 January 2019

USA – In the hour before the Camp Fire raced into Paradise on Nov. 8, calls to the town’s 911 dispatch center mounted.

“I live on Dean Road in Paradise. … We’re getting engulfed in smoke,” one caller reported at around 7:40 a.m.

“Yes ma’am, I know,” a dispatcher responded. “But the fire’s not here in Paradise. It’s north of Concow on Highway 70,” naming the small town a few miles away.

About a minute later, another Paradise resident who called in, alarmed by smoke, was told there was “no danger to Paradise at this time. OK?”

“I’m getting huge pieces of ash,” the caller explained.

“Ma’am,” the dispatcher said, “all I can tell you is what I’m telling you.”

But less than 20 minutes later, emergency officials would decide that conditions had become so perilous that every resident of the town should flee.

Audio recordings of 911 calls to Paradise’s small dispatch center that morning, obtained by The Chronicle through a public records request, provide a minute-to-minute document of a community caught off guard by a wind-driven blaze that would kill 86 people and destroy nearly 14,000 homes. Emergency managers and dispatchers were unaware of the speed and scale of the disaster until it had already hit them.

Dispatchers play a crucial role in crisis situations, connecting citizens reporting dangers with first responders. But amid the ferocity and chaos of the Camp Fire, the 911 records show, the model broke down. A Chronicle review of the calls suggests that in the critical moments before flames devoured Paradise, the town’s dispatchers did not receive up-to-the-minute information and gave caller after caller what was, in hindsight, a false sense of security.

At least 132 calls to 911 were answered between 6:30 a.m., when flames were first reported about 10 miles northeast of town, and 8:20 a.m., when the center rerouted all calls to nearby Chico because of overwhelming volume. Other 911 centers, including one run by Butte County, were also operating during the disaster.

The Camp Fire has raised myriad questions about how communities at risk of burning should prepare and respond. The 911 calls made that day underscore the need for better and quicker communication in the face of the state’s new wildfire reality.

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“There’s a fire up north of Concow, up near Highway 70,” dispatchers told dozens of callers who reported heavy smoke and ash in Paradise between 7:10 and 7:40 a.m. One caller was told: “There is no threat to Paradise.”

Some expressed surprise that the fire could still be 5 or so miles outside of town. “It’s that far away? It looks like it’s awfully close,” one man said to a dispatcher at around 7:30 a.m.

About the same time, another caller said she was “a little relieved” to hear that the fire hadn’t made its way into her neighborhood.

The tone of many of the earlier calls is relaxed and conversational, but they grew progressively rushed as calls flooded the system. In later conversations, people were told to be aware of a potential evacuation or to just leave if they saw flames.

At about 7:40 a.m., a woman asked about a possible evacuation order and was told by the dispatcher: “No, you’ll be notified.”

The caller persisted, appearing to reference an evacuation notice that had been put out by Butte County officials for the eastern outskirts of Paradise, between a main thoroughfare called Pentz Road and the Feather River Canyon.

After a brief silence, the dispatcher asked where the woman had gotten her information. “Butte, um, Fire,” she said.

“OK, we haven’t been advised of that,” the dispatcher replied. “If you have gotten a phone call or if you see flames or feel the need to leave, then do that at this time, but we haven’t been notified.”

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By 7:48 a.m., people were reporting spot fires — new blazes ignited by embers blown ahead of the main conflagration — over a large section of Paradise’s east side.

“The fire has come over the top of Sawmill Peak,” one caller said at about 7:50 a.m., referring to a mountaintop a mile northeast of Paradise. “There are spot fires all over and the wind is blowing like hell, and nobody notified us of anything.”

“Yeah, ’cause there’s no evacuations at this point,” a dispatcher said before transferring the call to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire. Over the next few minutes, dispatchers began telling those on the far northeast side of town to leave.

And minutes later, just after 8 a.m., the Butte County Fire Department notified Paradise dispatchers of their orders to evacuate the entire town.

“Are you serious?” one of the dispatchers asked, sounding stunned.

Records show authorities did not fully evacuate Paradise at this time through the community’s alert system. Both Butte County and Paradise used a program called CodeRED, which sends emergency text, phone and email alerts to people who signed up for the service, as well as targeted landline phones.

Evacuation orders for the east edge of Paradise began at 7:57 a.m., according to records reviewed by The Chronicle. Another round of evacuations, encompassing more of the town, started at 8:32 a.m.

Emergency managers declined to issue a Wireless Emergency Alert, an Amber Alert-style message, which could have reached most cell phones in the area.

Jim Broshears, Paradise’s emergency operations center coordinator and former fire chief, said the Camp Fire disaster “was so unique I’m still trying to figure it out.” Because of the speed of the fire, he said, the “feedback loops” between dispatchers, first responders and the public were “clearly compromised.”

Wildfires are relatively common in the Concow area, Broshears said, and many previous blazes have threatened to spread to Paradise. “But that day the shift was so fast,” he said. In a matter of five minutes, the flames in Concow shot to the west flank of Sawmill Peak, just across the Feather River.

“It was a game-changing moment,” Broshears said.

Dispatchers and emergency responders were making quick decisions based on decades of history, he said. Of the dispatchers’ communication with callers, he said, “That reaction makes sense to me. I’m not saying it’s right.”

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The erratic path of the Camp Fire complicated communication about it. A simulation by Cal Fire shows that Paradise residents didn’t face a single wave of flames but rather were engulfed by the mother blaze as well as numerous spot fires that grew into each other.

An orchard in the northeast corner of town burst into flames around 7:50 a.m., according to a 911 caller. Just after 8 a.m., fires were reported near a Lutheran church about 1 1/2 miles south, and outside Feather River Hospital a mile south of the church.

One Paradise dispatcher was on duty when the fire first erupted, said Paradise police Lt. Anthony Borgman. Eventually, two others stepped in to help, occupying the town’s only three 911 consoles. They relied primarily on citizen reports to gauge the fire’s location, Borgman said, and received some additional information from Cal Fire and the Butte County Fire Department.

After 8 a.m., everyone who called the Paradise dispatch center was given similar advice.

“Paradise police, we are under a mandatory evacuation,” one dispatcher said. “Collect your pets and your belongings, and leave.”

Another said, “There are spot fires picking up everywhere. There is a mandatory evacuation for Paradise. So you need to collect your belongings and bug out.”

At this point, many of those calling were clustered in certain locations. Some were at the Ridgewood Mobile Home Park, a 100-space senior living community nestled in foothills just west of the Feather River.

“I have no way to evacuate,” one Ridgewood resident told a dispatcher at 8:06 a.m. “I don’t have a car.”

The dispatcher transferred the person to Cal Fire. Two minutes later, an unidentified person reached the Paradise dispatch center, making what was already a futile request.

“Hey, do you have someone you can send out to Ridgewood Mobile Home Park?” the caller asked. “We have multiple calls from there with people saying they don’t have any way to get out.”

“No,” the dispatcher replied. “We don’t have anybody available.”

Of the 86 people who died in the Camp Fire, at least three were discovered inside residences at Ridgewood. Throughout Paradise, many of those killed were older, had physical disabilities, or were unable or unwilling to flee.

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Craig Fugate, former administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Barack Obama, said that while dispatch centers are “the pulse of the community,” a disaster that strikes an entire town can “overload what the system was built for.”

In Paradise, the deluge of calls for help and pleas for information left emergency responders struggling to keep up.

Aaron Abbott, executive director of Sonoma County’s medical and fire dispatch center, faced similar challenges during the 2017 Wine Country fires, when embers ignited hundreds of blazes all at once.

“When you’re talking about 800 individual fires burning in one county at the same time, and those reports are flooding in at various intervals … as a dispatch center, it becomes very difficult to decipher what the impacted area is,” Abbott said.

“People call 911 to get information,” he said. “Sometimes we don’t have the information, because sometimes they’re the first one to report it.”

California’s recent wildfires have “significantly” changed the conversation about how 911 dispatchers handle large-scale emergencies, said Budge Currier, 911 branch manager for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

The traditional role of a 911 operator is to receive information from the caller, then provide resources accordingly. Local and state officials are now researching how to better prepare dispatchers to respond to difficult scenarios such as a raging wildfire.

“For us, situational awareness is key,” Currier said. “And these incidents moved so fast that you must make a decision even if you don’t have all the information.”

Dispatch centers are overseen by local governments, but Cal OES is working to provide technology and training for each center as officials craft policies that suit their specific needs.

The state is also researching technology that would provide a common platform for communities to view each other’s emergency announcements. In some scenarios, Currier explained, a city may initiate evacuations without a nearby city knowing about it — a serious problem if cell phone calls are rerouted between the two.

“Those are the kinds of things that our limited technology today leads to,” he said. “So we’re trying our best to get more data to decision makers to have that critical information they need.”

Abbott, the Sonoma County dispatch director, said the recent wildfires in California are “a new kind of incident,” and the role of dispatchers is being evaluated: “Is there a better way we can do this? Should we be doing this differently? Those are questions emergency communication professionals are wrestling with right now, and there are no clear answers.”

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A half-dozen residents of Paradise who made 911 calls on the morning of Nov. 8 said in recent interviews that the fire had been much closer than what they were told by dispatchers. They did not fault emergency managers, though, instead pointing to the sheer power and speed of the fire.

William Richards, 71, said that as he fed his backyard chickens at around 7 a.m., he noticed a growing ball of yellow and black smoke on the horizon. He called 911 and was told there was a wind-driven fire in Concow, still far from his home on Pentz Road.

Within 10 minutes, he said, embers were falling into his yard. Richards left before receiving an evacuation order, then got stuck in traffic on one of the town’s few escape routes as flames surrounded him.

“I don’t think there’s a fire department in the world that could have gotten ahead of the fire as fast as it was moving,” Richards said.

Cheryl Stock-Tadeo, 57, said she was helping a customer load groceries into a car at the Paradise Save Mart — which survived the blaze — when she saw an orange glow and billowing black smoke on the horizon. She called 911 at 7:16 a.m. and was told she wasn’t in danger because the fire was in Concow.

“I was thinking, ‘Well, they’re the experts,'” she said.

A few minutes later, ash, embers and burning leaves started to rain down. Stock-Tadeo raced home to her family, then drove out of town. “I think they had an idea of where it started or where it was at one time, but the dispatcher had no idea how fast it was moving,” she said.

Joan Borges, 68, called 911 at 7:40 a.m. after she saw blue skies become choked with smoke. Emergency responders told her not to worry, that the fire was still miles away from her home on the edge of the Feather River Canyon in Paradise.

Six minutes later, she called 911 again to report that her neighbor’s house was in flames, and she was told to evacuate. Borges’ home burned down, as did the homes of each of the others interviewed by The Chronicle.

“It hit really fast. You had winds up to 50 mph coming up the canyon,” Borges said. “There was nothing they could have done. It was a nightmare. It still is.”

Megan Cassidy, Joaquin Palomino and Peter Fimrite are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com, jpalomino@sfchronicle.com, pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meganrcassidy, @joaquinpalomino, @pfimrite

19. January 2019/by GFMCadmin