By Khalida Sarwari
The Saratoga City Council approved a comprehensive emergency operations plan to help allocate response forces and resources after a major disaster.
The Saratoga Emergency Operations Plan creates a framework for Saratoga response personnel that makes the process of local hazard mitigation planning efficient. The plan identifies hazards that exist in the city, outlines the strengths and weaknesses of the city in its preparedness activities, and addresses the needs of the people in Saratoga during a disaster. The council approved the plan at its July 3 meeting.
The 36-page document was developed for Saratoga by Jim Yoke, an emergency planner for the West Valley cities. The last time it was updated was in 2009. Yoke described it as “one plan that can handle any kind of disaster” or “an all-hazards plan.”
“The emergency operation plan, which describes how a city is going to respond to a disaster, is something that does change over time fairly regularly, so you want to keep updating it on a pretty consistent basis,” he said.
Within the document are sections that address such factors as hazard analysis, which outlines certain risks that the city must pay special attention to.
“Earthquake is a very, very big deal and so are wildfires,” Yoke said. “I’d say those are the top two actually.”
The document states, “It is safe to say that any major earthquake in the Santa Clara County area (including Saratoga) will cause many injuries, loss of life, residential and commercial structural damage, and infrastructure damage to bridges, roads, utilities, and communications.”
Other dangers mentioned are heat wave, wind damage and fire, particularly in homes with wooden shake shingle roofs and in the downtown area.
The document addresses ways to collectively mitigate those risks to prevent a situation similar to the one that occurred in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
The emergency operations plan describes Saratoga’s level of preparedness and raises questions about the type of training and planning that is required in order to be prepared following a disaster. Another area of focus is recovery, specifically in terms of how the city will lead recovery efforts following a major disaster.
Yoke said that over the next six months, annexes will be added to augment the emergency operations plan. Those will address utilities, roads, heat, and water and wastewater.
In March, the Saratoga City Council also approved a revised safety element of the city’s General Plan, which pertains to natural and human activity-related hazards in Saratoga, along with the measures to address them through advance planning and preparation before they become serious problems. The document addresses geologic, seismic, flood and fire hazards, as well as hazards created by human activity such as hazardous materials and waste.
Saratoga’s updated emergency operations plan can be viewed athttp://saratoga.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?meta_id=36802&;view=&showpdf=1.
Saratoga has a plan to be prepared in the event of an emergency
