Angora Fire -- information dissemination lacking

Unedited version of what was in 08-07 Tahoe Mountain News


Speed, accuracy of information not at 21st century standards

By Kathryn Reed

As embers swirled in the air during the Angora Fire, so did rumors and misinformation. People punched radio button dials to no avail. No scroll on television stations could be found dispersing Angora updates.
Communication and dissemination of information – those are two areas officials intend to improve upon before the next disaster strikes the South Shore.
“I would like to have a radio frequency that is well known by the public and visitors that everyone can access in the event of an emergency,” South Lake Tahoe Mayor Kathay Lovell said.
Officials are investigating if Caltrans station AM 1610 could be expanded to reach more people and be used for things other than road condition updates.
During previous crisis situations the local radio stations were easily accessed. Now much of the programming is prerecorded and often no one is in the office.
KRLT FM 93.9 is usually live from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the week, KOWL AM 1490 is live 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays and KTHO AM 590 is automated around the clock with a live satellite feed from ABC.
Local radio stations said they did their best to get information on the air, but because of conflicting press releases from authorities it took time to track down the truth.
On top of that, the emergency alert system was not activated.
“One tool is EAS. The decision was made to get bodies in patrol cars and knock on doors. We needed to get in the area and evacuate people,” explained Lt. Kevin House of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office. He is the official spokesperson for the department. “It was the right decision. You will find no one involved in this process saying that wasn’t the right decision.”
How people were told to evacuate the first day is not the issue. What residents throughout the South Shore are second guessing is why that tool provided by the Federal Communications Commission wasn’t used to let everyone else know what was going on that fateful Sunday and subsequent days as the fire flared up.
House said it wasn’t necessary to use the emergency broadcast system. He contends information was easy to access and repeatedly mentioned the throngs of media at the command center at Lake Tahoe Airport.
It’s not up to local radio stations to activate the emergency system, nor can they.
“We had a lot of phone calls asking why the EAS was not initiated. We can’t do it here. It has to come from a central source. They chose not to,” said Ed Crook, KTHO operations manager.
A government official – the city manager, police chief, governor or the like – is the one to activate the system. KKOH AM 780 in Reno would be notified. It sends a signal to stations in Northern California and Nevada alerting them of the disaster.
“When the fire started on the 24th they could have contacted KKOH and said we have this fire in South Lake Tahoe and give information like evacuation routes. Why they did not do it I don’t know,” said Bill Kingman, who came out of retirement for a week to take KTHO live during the fire. He has been in the Tahoe radio business since 1961.
Even an unmanned radio station will transmit an emergency broadcast because of the technology radio stations are required to have.
“Suppose people were in Reno and heard the activation and said that’s my house? What good is it to go door-to-door if nobody is home?” Kingman questioned. “I heard about people in Reno who could have called neighbors to let their pets out.”
Kingman does not want to condemn or criticize the powers that be, but he does question the reasoning for not activating EAS.
“The best information Tuesday (June 26) was a person at the corner of Venice and Tahoe Keys who said you better get the police down here. He was audibly upset. He was trapped in his car,” Kingman said of the Keys gridlock when the fire jumped Highway 89 and evacuations were widespread throughout the Keys and Tahoe Island areas.
Not long after that he said traffic at Sierra Boulevard was stopped – which he saw from KTHO offices in the Swiss Chalet center – to allow traffic on Highway 50 to flow.
Kingman used the various webcams around town for information. Caltrans’ camera in Meyers that usually shows traffic was turned to the fire. The KCRA camera on Harveys that often shows Mount Tallac was turned just to the left so flames were visible.
Over at KRLT, program manager Rob Humphrey broke into the prerecorded programming at about 3 p.m. on the first day of the fire.
“He would have interrupted the programming completely if he had something to tell people and a really reliable source,” said Betsy Miller, general manager of KRLT and KOWL. “The business manger went out and stayed over 24 hours at the command center and he used his personal cell phone to give updates to the radio station.”
Including Miller, there are eight employees between KRLT and KOWL.
She says people called in angry about music being played and Howie Nave cracking jokes that Sunday. Most people didn’t realize the station isn’t live on weekends.
“There is going to be music because there is not a constant stream of information,” Miller explained.
Information was sketchy at the command center hours after the illegal campfire became the worst disaster in memory for the South Shore. Once the fire crews moved to Heavenly Mountain Resort, media had to access information from them as well as law enforcement at the airport. Conflicts were the norm.
South Lake city officials sent regular emails to media and others. The South Shore Chamber let its people and others know what was going on. The media got more right than wrong despite having to delve through reams of paper.
“That first couple, three hours we didn’t have any access to the fire guys. It was all hands on deck,” explained South Lake Police Chief Terry Daniels about the initial lack of communication. “We don’t know what’s going on because they are in the hot zone. That was an issue the first few hours. It took Kevin (House) a few hours to come up from Placerville to be the public information officer.”
Daniels had an officer speak to the press even though this was a county event and technically they should have been doing the talking.
“We know next time we need a better liaison between fire and law enforcement side to get good quality information out sooner,” Daniels said.
“Getting the information out is a massive project. It takes time to filter information to get to the public,” House said. “The solution is having the personnel available and getting it out in as timely a fashion as possible. The information loop has always been the last thing that comes onboard even though to you and I it should be the first.”
Law enforcement and fire acknowledge a joint command center should have been set up.
“One of the things we talked about (in debriefing) is that in the first 48 hours of that event we didn’t have a joint information center well established. A lot of information was going out but it wasn’t unified,” Daniels said. “If those PIOS would have been in one room speaking with one voice, collaborating their information, so many things would be corrected by that.”
Neves essentially said the same timing.
“(A joint information center) would have provided more timely, consistent information to a lot of folks instead of how it went,” Neves said.
Before the next disaster Daniels hopes to have a reverse 911system in place that would tell people to evacuate. Money may come from Homeland Security grants.
Sheriff Jeff Neves also admits communication must be improved before the next catastrophe hits. The sheriff’s department activated its reverse 911 system for mandatory evacuations, however it’s only successful if people hear the message.
Lake Tahoe Unified School District’s phone system was also implemented. It dials people employed with the district or who have children.
Miller hopes the chaos of Angora will be a catalyst for change in how information is disseminated so her radio stations have accurate information to disperse.
“Days into it the sheriff’s office was telling a different story than the Forest Service who told a different story than the CHP,” the radio boss said. “We got so many requests. We had hundreds of pieces of paper. We had to decide what was legitimate and what was for personal profit. A lot of people were trying to benefit from this. ”
Tom Millham and George Alm were live for threes hours on KOWL that stressful Tuesday when Gardner Mountain erupted. Employees for KRLT were working 12 to 14 hour shifts to get info out.
“At that point we were sequestered in our building (at the Tahoe Keys Marina) because they were evacuating the other end of Venice. We were getting updates that were not agreeing from the different agencies,” Miller said.
But some are critical of the stations.
“You can’t tell me they couldn’t get through. We all had PDAs and cell phones. If they felt they were getting too much information and conflicting information, they could have come down to the command center,” Mayor Lovell said of the radio stations.
Police Chief Daniels sent a patrol car to KRLT the first day in order to get information on the airwaves.
“We knocked on the door the first day. We did find somebody eventually. It was probably an hour or so into the thing before we could get access,” Daniels said.
Miller adamantly defends her employees and what they were able to accomplish.