[00:00 – 00:32]
[Kim Delacort] All right. Good evening everyone. Welcome to the La Conchita town hall. My name is Kim Delacort. I am an emergency manager here at the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services. And I’ll be your host this evening. I wanted to take time to thank everybody for joining us. I know your schedules are busy, so we really appreciate your time and joining us as we cover some hazards that are specific to La Conchita.

[00:32 – 00:53]
And before we get started, I do want to talk about a couple housekeeping items. Tonight we are offering Spanish and American Sign Language interpretation. You should be able to see our ASL interpreter on the gallery view of the camera. But I am going to ask Lourdes Campbell to walk us through how you can obtain the Spanish interpretation.

[00:54 – 01:32]
If you’d like to use those services, Lourdes. [Lourdes Campbell] Please select your language at the bottom of your screen from the icon that looks like a globe. Please select English, even if that’s the only language you speak so you don’t miss anything. Para todas las personas, que quiere escuchar en espanol. Seleccione su idioma la parte inferior de su pantalla desde el ícono informa de globo, escojan espanol a las personas que solo hablas English escojan English no pierda nada, muchas gracias.

[01:32 – 01:57]
[Kim Delacort] Thank you Lourdes. So we’ll go ahead and let Lourdes and Brendan get into the Spanish translation room for just a moment. In the meantime, we can go to the next slide and we’ll talk about how we can receive your questions. Ideally, we would have loved to have an in-person meeting for this and to be able to see everyone and to be, you know, engaged in a conversation about, the topics tonight.

[01:57 – 02:19]
But unfortunately, Covid prevents us from doing that. So we want to put everyone’s safety first and foremost. We wanted to still present this in a virtual way, but we still want it to be interactive. We would like to hear from you. So to do that, we would like you to take advantage of the question and answer feature. And you can do that by following the instructions on your screen and type your questions in the chat.

[02:19 – 02:37]
We’re going to have somebody monitoring those questions. So we will be sure to answer those as they come up. And we will have a session at the end where we can recap and follow up with you on those things. And so with that, I’d like to move on to our opening remarks tonight with us. We have, we’ll start off with Sheriff Bill Ayub.

[02:37 – 03:06]
Sheriff. [Sheriff Bill] Thank you, Kim, and welcome to the La Conchita town hall discussion. And thank you for taking the time to get involved in this important conversation. We in our Office of Emergency Services have a talented and dedicated team of emergency management professionals, that work collaboratively with stakeholders in all sectors. And they’re always looking to the horizon for threats to our community, to keep our edge in being well prepared to respond to virtually any type of emergency in the community.

[03:06 – 03:26]
We’re continuously reviewing and renewing our practices, our equipment, our capabilities, and our relationships. A large part of our communities. Excuse me just a moment. I have a technical problem…

[03:26 – 03:29]
Beg your pardon?

[03:29 – 03:49]
There we go. A large part of our community’s readiness to mitigate, respond and recover from disasters. Through our publics preparedness and awareness. And that is exactly why we’re meeting this evening. La Conchita, as most of you know, is an area that’s exceptionally vulnerable. And we want to make sure that everyone who lives in and visits the La Conchita

[03:49 – 04:06]
community is aware of our concerns and prepared in case disaster strikes. We need your help, and I’m thankful you’re taking the time to get involved in ensuring our community safety. Thank you very much.

[04:06 – 04:29]
[Kim Delacort] Thank you. Sheriff. And up next, we’d like to invite Supervisor Matt LeVere to speak a few opening words for us. Supervisor. [Matt LeVere] Yeah. Thank you Kim. Good evening everyone. Nice to meet you all. Virtually. My name is Matt LeVere. I’m the county supervisor, representing the north coast in La Conchita. So I want to start by thanking all of you for taking part in this town hall tonight.

[04:29 – 04:53]
You know, when it comes to, emergency preparedness, being educated and prepared are really two of the things that all of us should be doing as we look to responding to emergencies. And those are priorities. The county really prioritizes. And clearly, that’s why we’re all here tonight. Here at the county, it’s important to us to share all of our information and all of our knowledge, to the community so they can be equally prepared and equally educated.

[04:53 – 05:23]
And so I really applaud all of you for taking part in tonight’s town hall. I’ve had the chance to meet with several of your community organization members virtually. We had a great discussion about issues, larger issues in La Conchita. And I’m really looking forward to getting up there in the next month or two. To meet many of you personally, and to get to know you, get to know La Conchita issues and to better know, continue a relationship, because it’s really important to me, that, that, that my constituents know me, know my face, know how to get in touch with me and know that I’m here to help

[05:23 – 05:52]
you. And so I’ll look forward to meet you all in person, hopefully soon. And until then, please enjoy tonight’s meeting and thank you to the Sheriff Ayub, and the entire OES team, for putting this on. [Kim Delacort] Thank you. Supervisor. All right. Up next, we are excited to introduce our panelists. We have some experts from our various county agencies who are going to share from their level of expertise about some of the the issues that La Conchita faces.

[05:52 – 06:21]
And so tonight we’re going to introduce you to Scott Holder, who is a hydrologist with the Public Works Agency out of our watershed team, watershed protection team. Excuse me. And then up next we will have our geologist, Jim O’Tousa. So from Public Works I will talk about some geological geology issues in the area. And then we are pleased to welcome Chief Todd Leake from the Ventura County Fire Department, who will talk about some public safety, response issues.

[06:21 – 06:53]
And then finally, our director of Office of Emergency Services, Patrick Maynard, will walk us through some evacuation and resources that are available to you. All right. So let’s go to Scott Holder. [Scott Holder] Good evening. I’m Scott Holder. I work for the Public Works agency, Watershed Protection District. We operate, a, gauge network that has, roughly about 90, rain gauges across, Ventura County.

[06:54 – 07:15]
Two of which are located there in La Conchita, one at station 25. At the fire station, you can actually see it from the, freeway. And the other one is another, on the block above La Conchita. You can see it on to the right. It’s actually a pole weather station up there. But both of those, sites, report

[07:15 – 07:23]
rainfall. You’ll be able to see the, rainfall. We offer a web page. Next slide please.

[07:24 – 07:48]
Yeah. There we go. We offer a our data live on the internet any time you go there right now. Obviously, we haven’t had any rain to speak of, it’s been pretty much Santa Anas lately. But you can see, the rain gauges. And when we do get rain, you’ll be able to, see the how much rain we actually get.

[07:48 – 08:13]
It’s easy to get to. You can just go to VCwatershed.net. And right from that, the whole URL, there’s the map, but you can actually get it from that, web page. There’s a little maps tab and you just drop down to get to the rain map. So, next slide. So we’ve got, question is, how much rain have we gotten?

[08:13 – 08:38]
So, so far, we’ve got between eight, and 8.5in. We’re almost 8.5in on the bluff. Just over eight inches at the fire station since, October. We had a couple storms. We had, the one, in, October. But then we had those series of storms in December. Those were fairly significant storms.

[08:38 – 09:08]
Much, much more significant rin than we normally see. Our average December rain is roughly about 1.8in. And as you can tell, see from the slide we received, about seven and a quarter to 7.75in of rain. And then, basically our last storm being on, New Year’s Eve, and then since then, not much, we’ve actually received .01 is some drizzle at the fire station.

[09:08 – 09:36]
And nothing on the bluff above. Normally we see about 2.7in for the month of January, so very dry. January and, you know, February, we normally it’s our wettest month of the year. We usually receive about, 3.3in of rain. But right now it’s looking dry. It we have, nothing but Santa Anas with the next week at least.

[09:36 – 10:09]
And currently, there’s not really looking at any kind of rain on the horizon. We have what’s called a La Nina condition in the, Pacific Ocean. Which tends to build these high pressures along the California coast. And at this point, it’s kind of the pattern that we’re seeing. The storms are being pushed way up into British Columbia and southern Alaska, and they’re coming down as these really cold storms into the Midwest and East, where they get snow.

[10:09 – 10:19]
So, you know, the below normal rainfall prediction is still continuing. So, next slide.

[10:19 – 10:47]
So basically the important thing is, yeah, we’re looking at, dry with maybe some scattered drizzle when we do get the onshore, flow and some fog. The big question is, can Southern California still get right? The answer is yes. Our wettest month of the year is February. The next wettest March. So we can still get some rain through.

[10:47 – 11:12]
You know, April into May. Will we get that rain? That’s a very good question. Right now is we’re looking dry for at least the next couple of weeks. But, you know, could the pattern change? Yes it could. Will it? We don’t really know. Can Southern California get significant rain again this year? It’s definitely possible.

[11:12 – 11:39]
We saw that happen in December. We saw some storms undercut the high pressure and really give a lot of rain to to California, both northern and southern. So is it possible? Yes. It is. Will, we get it. We don’t know. So we’re still looking at possible drought conditions for not only Southern California, but all of California at this point.

[11:39 – 12:05]
Hopefully that will change. But right now, there’s no indications of that. So, that’s kind of, information about we offer, all this data available online. You’re welcome to view it by going to our, web page. We have both historical and, current rainfall. And, we also offer our data live for the sheriff’s OES.

[12:06 – 12:28]
There is a, La Conchita page on their website that also gives you, significant rain in the last month. Last couple weeks. And, they peak intensities during any storm event. So all that information is available. I think that’s it for me. So. [Kim Delacort] All right. Perfect. Thank you so much, Scott. That was really informative.

[12:28 – 12:48]
Next we’re going to invite Jim O’Tousa to come and give us a geology lesson. Jim. [Jim O’Tousa] Thank you Kim. Good evening everybody. I probably would know most of you if we were in person, but since we’re not, I’m, remoting in. I’m going to talk to you about a little bit about the history of La Conchita and the landslides that we’ve experienced.

[12:48 – 13:16]
The community as well as the county and how how we can discern these slides and what the what the causes of those slides were. Basically, there’s there’s three main hazards. There’s a catastrophic failure of a large, large ancient slide. There’s also debris flows, which we experienced in 2005. And then we can have a catastrophic failure with debris flows, which in 1995, technically both of those events occurred.

[13:16 – 13:48]
So those are kind of the challenges that we face in this community with with respect to the geologic hazards that are there. The hazards are basically related to the groundwater elevations as well as the rainfall and the intensity of the rainfall that falls. You’ll notice in the in the picture, you’ll see a lot of we I call them eyebrows, for lack of a better word, but they’re the curve curvilinear patches of soil that are up and you can see them on the slope.

[13:48 – 14:09]
And you can see them in the upper, middle, middle section, a little to the right. There’s a there’s the 95 head scarp. It’s a curvilinear feature that it’s one of the things that I want you to look out for. If you see new ones forming on that hillside. The other thing is we we really don’t want anybody to excavate into the toe of the hill at all.

[14:09 – 14:22]
If you do, please come see us. At least get a geotechnical engineer to come see us, and we can discuss, what? What studies would need to be done to do that? Next slide.

[14:22 – 14:42]
So briefly, there’s there’s basically just two colors here. Well there’s there’s four. There’s more than that. But I want you to pay attention to two colors. The first one is the very light blue one which is the center of the slide. That is an older landslide mass that still exists up on the hill. Immediately to the right of that is the 1995.

[14:42 – 15:04]
It’s a dark, orange color. And then there’s a light orange color, which is the 2005 slide. So those three colors are what’s on the hill. And if you look further to the right in another color, you’ll see another older slide that that exists up there. So that black slope is covered with ancient slides as well as some very recent slides.

[15:04 – 15:27]
The other the other important color was the yellow color that is, if you can read it, it’ll say DF, which is debris flow. So those are the map debris flows. And you can see in the community how far the modeling that was done in 2009 by Lettice and Associates is part of the state study showed those debris flows to go into the community.

[15:27 – 16:02]
So those those present, what has been mapped is the hazards, for the community. Next slide please. So the historical recap, the 1995 side, it was deep seated, which means it was more related to, groundwater than it was for, short term rainfall. So what happened here? It occurred in, March of 95, about 2:03, cover, ten acres, damaged nine homes, and there weren’t any fatalities.

[16:02 – 16:27]
The interesting part for the community now is in looking at it, the landslide occurred about two months after we received 15in of rainfall. That number will come back again. So just remember 15in of rainfall in the month of January. So it took time for that water to infiltrate into the ground or percolate in, to lubricate the slide and fill the toe of the slide with water,

[16:27 – 16:56]
contributing to the failure. Next slide. Then in 2005, due to some, very heavy rainfall period, we had a debris flow that came from the hillside as well as some of the old 1995, slide. It covered about eight acres. It destroyed 13 homes, it damaged 23. And it actually cost the lives of ten people in La Conchita.

[16:56 – 17:23]
And this this event you noticed in the lower right corner? It occurred about after, it occurred after the area received eight inches of rainfall in about two weeks or 15 days. So that’s more this is a more surficial slide, just as dangerous, if not more dangerous. And they occurred due to intense rainfall that occurs in a short period of time.

[17:23 – 17:50]
Next slide. Then we have these, just rainfall intensities where we get up to about an inch or more than an inch greater in one hour. It saturates the soil very rapidly. It reduces the strength of the soil as well as, Adds weight to the soil from the weight of the water. And we end up with these things we will call soil slips.

[17:50 – 18:19]
Some people will call them, small debris flows. It just depends on what language. You’re basically the same thing. And for the residents and everybody out there and La Conchita you really want to track the intensity of the rain. Because that will we’ll start to generate these types of failures. Next slide. So here’s another slump or smaller slides.

[18:19 – 18:37]
Now there’s a lot of vocabulary here. But if you call them smaller slide, people will know what you’re talking about. You’ll see the debris flow. That was the picture of the previous slide. Immediately to the left of it there’s a smaller slide. You’ll notice the nice curvilinear eyebrows at the top. That’s the head scarp of it.

[18:37 – 18:58]
And it’s it’s not really deep seeded and it’s not really shallow. It’s an in-between slide. Some some literature calls and slumps. Some column smaller slides I use smaller slide. It’s kind of easier to to get a handle on it. An interesting thing from the history up there. We had one not at this location, but further up to the north.

[18:58 – 19:27]
And this is at Rin con. It occurred after about one inch of rain fell in 24 hours. But prior to that, the day it failed, we had five days of about an inch or 24 hours in each of the days. So those will lead to this intermediate slide where we may not get 15in of rain, months ahead of time, but we get some rain ahead of time and we have enough water in the ground such that we produce these smaller slides.

[19:27 – 19:53]
And these these are the hazards where we want you to be aware of, and to be able to see some of the signs that these may be occurring. Next slide. So we put it was put together the historical triggers. So we looked at the 95 and it was 15in of rainfall in 30 days or less. And that caused that ground to fail and created that failure.

[19:53 – 20:18]
The next one in the, in the 05 slide, it occurred about after two weeks where we had eight inches of rain falling, and then we had these other, about one inch of rain in an hour will create these soil slips, debris flows. And then we also have this one inch of rain per 24 hours that will create more of these intermediate or smaller slides.

[20:18 – 20:33]
So the one inch of rainfall per hour will, will automatically trigger, the potential for one inch in 24 hour slide. So, what can you do? Next slide please.

[20:33 – 20:57]
So to be aware, you need to check on that hillside, especially in the winter months. If you see cracks on the slopes or these eyebrow looking head scarps, that should be an immediate call. If there’s bulging near the bottom of the slope where things look taller than they were yesterday, or there’s cracking. You you want to be aware of that as well?

[20:57 – 21:20]
If there’s material flaking off the exposed scarp from either the 95 or the 05, that means something’s moving up there and you need to seek safety. So what what really would help if you just are aware of the rainfall forecast and you don’t wait until the rain to seek safety, that community has one entrance and one exit.

[21:21 – 21:48]
The 101, if you remember, Montecito debris flow, closed it to the north, and we’ve had other events that close it to the south that come off the hillsides between La Conchita and Ventura. So for at least during the rainy seasons, if you follow the total rainfall amounts and then keep an eye on the storm estimates for both the total rain and intensities, you can, you know, make the best decisions for your own safety.

[21:48 – 22:11]
And then I would always check the VC Emergency website. It has, links to the rain gauges as well as some, other great information that you can, be very aware of for your safety, up there when it, when we have rain or other events and I’ll and not not until well at least it download in the event of an earthquake.

[22:11 – 22:34]
That will exacerbate slope instability. So you need to be cognizant if there’s an earthquake. There’s a there’s a few, hazards associated, which is not really the, the focus, but you could have a tsunami, which we experienced not that long ago. You could also have slope failures, and you could also have a phenomenon called liquefaction.

[22:34 – 22:57]
So there’s other hazards other than the slope. And I didn’t want to leave you with just having a landslide. Discussion for hazards, as there are other hazards there that you need to be aware of and take the necessary precautions and preparedness for. I believe that’s it for me, Kim. [Kim Delacort] All right. Thanks, Jim. Well, there’s a lot of great information, a lot of details.

[22:57 – 23:07]
Thank you so much for all of that. All right. Next up, let’s hear from our division chief, Todd Leake. Todd.

[23:07 – 23:45]
[Todd Leake] Well good evening. I’d like to, start off by saying what a great relationship we have with all of our fellow responders and, from the sheriff’s OES and the public works departments, and how we depend so much on their advice and their knowledge that when we respond to something that we can, participate in, fulfill any of the needs that we can, for as a first responder to provide safety for the residents of the county and how we develop and have had good long term relationships with our fellow members in the county to assist with that.

[23:45 – 24:16]
It’s not the first time we’re working together during an emergency. We’ve developed those relationships and know what each person is capable of. Each section of the county, when there is a major disaster, we will come in and, develop a unified command. We will, there’ll be representative from each agency, and we discuss what the needs are, what the evacuations are, are needed and, provide for not only first responders safety, but safety of the citizens that we can access.

[24:16 – 24:45]
And, what are we can do to rescue them. At that point, we, and then the La Conchita in the 2005, and the 95, there was no rescues in that point. But when the when there was the fatal, we come in with our, energy companies and our use our companies, and we have, equipment to go in and and assist with, not only locating, but rescuing those individuals as needed as we can.

[24:45 – 25:05]
Besides that, we do have a and depend quite heavily, when there’s a large incident like this for our, agencies like L.A. County, L.A. city, Santa Barbara County that have other use of our capabilities, just like we assisted with the floods up in the Montecito. We came in assist with our use, our companies up there.

[25:05 – 25:27]
So if there’s any other questions I can ask, I can answer, from the people in the audience. Let me know. Thank you. [Kim Delacort] Thank you. Chief. All right. And last but not least, we have our director of the Office of Emergency Services, Patrick Maynard. Patrick. [Patrick Maynard] Thanks, Kim. And thanks, everyone, for joining us tonight. I really appreciate your time.

[25:27 – 25:50]
I know it is valuable. So, so far we’ve heard a little bit from our watershed protection team about, our technology that we have to monitor rainfall in the area. We’ve heard about the hazards, from our county geologist, Jim O’Tousa. We just heard from Chief Todd Leake, about fires potential response. And now I want to share a little bit of, from our perspective in the Office of Emergency Services.

[25:50 – 26:12]
And that has to do with both evacuations and notifications during one of these, horrible events. First and foremost, I do want to say La Conchita is a beautiful place, 99.99% of the time. It’s a great community. Talk about a bunch of great people that just really care about each other. We enjoy going to the neighborhood and just chatting with people as we check out the hillside.

[26:12 – 26:39]
A couple times a year. And I don’t want to in any way diminish the beauty of that community. All that being said, it is important that we continually remind people that La Conchita remains a geological hazard zone. And as much as we have technology available to monitor rainfall and the ability to watch, potential changes on the hillside, the reality is a failure of that hillside can occur at any time.

[26:39 – 26:58]
And the real big takeaway that I just want to be sure that it’s loud and clear tonight is please, please do not wait for us as the county Office of Emergency Services or the fire Department to evacuate. We want you to feel empowered to monitor that hillside. And if you see something that doesn’t look right, you let us know.

[26:58 – 27:17]
You let your neighbors know. And you, most importantly, get the heck out of there. Don’t wait until you receive an official notification from us. Things in that area are very dynamic, and as Jim said, sometimes they happen as the rainfall occurs. Sometimes they happen far after the rainfall occurs. And our ability to predict those things is just not great.

[27:17 – 27:38]
So please, if you see something that does not look right, let us know. It is an emergency situation. We will get somebody up there to look at the hillside. And again, if you see danger present, please don’t wait to evacuate. Evacuate right away. The other thing we want you to recognize is things change quickly. Especially as rainfall, you know, proceeds.

[27:38 – 27:59]
I remember it very well. Back to the Montecito event. Just not that long ago. And we were here in the emergency operations center of Ventura watching the rainfall. And the rain was, you know, predicted to be heavy that night. But not as intense as we ultimately saw up in the Montecito area. Our first inclination of the severity, though, was when that rain, crossed over the islands and we saw quite a bit of rainfall occur.

[27:59 – 28:20]
Had that rain been a little bit south of there, it would have hit the La Conchita area almost unexpectedly, and more than likely caused some significant damage. Rainfall to the degree that we saw up in La Conchita or rather, Montecito, rather, was of biblical proportions, and that amount of rainfall anywhere would have caused damage. Fortunately

[28:20 – 28:39]
and unfortunately, that occurred to the north of us. So La Conchita was spared and Montecito was hit very hard, but that, just as easily could have been south and caused damage to us. So again, remain vigilant to those rapidly changing conditions during those rain events. If you have some type of disability access or functional need, consider leaving early.

[28:39 – 28:59]
Don’t wait until something occurs to make that decision. We want you to get out there. Get out of there as quickly as possible. Next slide please. When it comes to evacuation terminology, I do want to share with you, there have been a couple of changes in the words, or word wording that we use during and evacuation scenario.

[28:59 – 29:22]
You may have heard in the past the use of the word mandatory evacuation and voluntary evacuation. Ventura County, along with a number of other counties in the state, have worked hard to standardize the language that we use, regardless of what jurisdiction you live in. So the two terms that we now use to refer to evacuations are evacuation orders and evacuation warnings.

[29:22 – 29:44]
And an evacuation order is, indicating that the danger is imminent. That means get out now. Don’t wait. Don’t wait to pack things up. Get out now. Conditions have presented that seriously imperil or endanger the lives of those in the defined area. An evacuation warning, or what we previously would have referred to as a voluntary evacuation, means that a threat to lives is not yet imminent.

[29:44 – 30:14]
However, residents should be prepared to evacuate again. Anyone with a disability, access or functional need should definitely consider evacuating early. It, you know, conditions there change quickly, so use that evacuation warning opportunity to evacuate before conditions really worsen. Next slide. So we get this question a lot. How will we be notified. And again this is assuming we have the opportunity to notify residents of some type of danger.

[30:14 – 30:36]
We may not have that opportunity. But if we do have the opportunity here are the methods that we would use. We used door to door notifications using our sheriff’s tactical response team. If we have the time and it’s safe to do so, we will do our best to get a sheriff’s deputy at every house in that neighborhood and knock on doors and let people know what’s going on and find out whether they plan on leaving or staying.

[30:36 – 31:00]
We also use what’s called a high low siren. It’s a high, low pitched siren where the sheriff’s vehicle vehicles will travel through neighborhoods, and you’ll hear that. And that’s your warning to get out. One of the other tools that we have in our toolbox is the V.C. alert emergency notification system. You more than likely received a phone call from that system, last night advising of this, virtual town hall meeting tonight.

[31:00 – 31:19]
That system relies upon data that we have in there, both listed and unlisted telephone numbers, as well as cell phone data that we purchase. But you two can also opt in to that system. Provide us your cell phone number. We may not have it. So if you’re not registered, please go to VCalert.org and we’ll have that towards the end of the presentation again.

[31:19 – 31:45]
But go to VCalert.org and register that information. That is our most efficient way to to notify people during an emergency. One of the other tools, that Jim O’tousa mentioned earlier is our website that is up all day, every day, and is used to convey emergency information. That website is VCemergency.com. And on that web page, we actually have a page dedicated to the La Conchita community.

[31:45 – 32:05]
And there’s some basic information on there. But one of the really cool features, courtesy of, of the great smart people over at the Watershed team, is a real time, status of rainfall. And it shows, the rainfall in the previous, 30 days, previous 15 days. And then intensity wise, it shows a one hour and two hour intensity.

[32:05 – 32:27]
So those are real time tools that, you can use from your home doesn’t require any special logging. Just go to that website to monitor rainfall. During an event. Again, do not rely solely on those tools, though. Those tools are just indicators. It’s very much up to you to monitor the situation. Use your senses to go outside and keep an eye on that hillside.

[32:27 – 32:46]
Talk to your neighbors and make sure that you know you’re not just waiting for us to let you know to, to leave. A couple other tools that we have to notify you. We have the ability to send out a wireless emergency alert or a fire alert, as WEA call it. That’s very similar to an Amber alert. Does not require you to opt in to receive that alert.

[32:46 – 33:07]
It reaches all cellular telephones within a specific geographic region. We do not use that unless it’s a really, really, really bad scenario. So, when we do that, our ability to convey information is very limited. We are limited by the number of characters we can send out. So we use that sparingly. But God forbid there were some type of significant event in La Conchita.

[33:07 – 33:30]
We would be using every tool possible to alert residents to get out. And then lastly, we have the emergency alert system. The emergency alert system has been around since the 50s, and that system is there to, interrupt your radio broadcast. It interrupts your television broadcast, and you’ll hear audible information, as well as a text crawl across your television screen with some basic information during that emergency.

[33:30 – 33:54]
Next slide, please. A couple of resources available to you again ahead of an emergency. We always make sure we tell everyone preparedness is not just our responsibility. At the county office of Emergency Services or the fire department of the sheriff’s office. It’s everyone’s responsibility. We encourage you to build a kit, make a plan. You can find out more information about how to do that at our preparedness website, which is readyventuracounty.org.

[33:54 – 34:19]
And then, of course, during an actual event or ahead of an event, you can go to VCEmergency.com to find out information about the current rain event or the current fire event. Whatever the type of event that’s going on in Ventura County, if it is of significance, we will be posting information on VCEmergency.com. In case you’re wondering, tonight’s presentation, will be posted on VCEmergency.com as well as this presentation as well.

[34:20 – 34:36]
And lastly, but certainly most important, and this is one of the things I love about La Conchita. Again you guys have a great community is get involved. Talk to your neighbors, make a plan. See how you guys can help each other out. And don’t be shy about getting to know, your neighbors. Not just to your right and to your left, but across the street.

[34:36 – 34:56]
You never know when you’re going to need their help. And, you know, you may be called upon at some point to, you know, help someone during an emergency. So get involved today by ensuring that you reach out to those folks and, offer your support. Next slide please. This is just a quick screenshot of our VCemergency, webpage.

[34:56 – 35:14]
Notice up at the top there. The page has a link directly to a La Conchita page. The web page is also available in Spanish. And you can see all the Spanish pages by clicking on the Spanish button in the top right. Again, when nothing is going on, this website simply says there are currently no major incidents to report.

[35:14 – 35:36]
But when something is occurring that is of significance, again, a significant rain event, multiple days of rain in Ventura County. We will be posting information to this website. So please, keep this website, on the fridge, on your bookmarks. And make sure you go to it for information. This is our best and quickest and easiest way to get information out to you.

[35:36 – 35:57]
Next slide. This here is just, quick snapshot of the great work from our Public Works Watershed protection team, where they have put in real time rainfall information. Again, is Scott Holder alluded to earlier, we have two rain gauges, one that sits directly above the community on the bluff, and then one at the fire station located just off the Seacliff.

[35:57 – 36:32]
And we provide real time rainfall information on this web page, both in English and Spanish. That updates again in real time. So as it’s occurring when we’re learning about it, you can learn about it as well. Just go to this webpage, click on the La Conchita button and scroll down and you’ll see this rainfall. Again we’ve set it up so you can see a 14 day snapshot of the cumulative rainfall, a 28 day snapshot or 24 hour total, as well as our one hour intensity, so that all those things there really correspond with the historical event triggers that you see just above, that 15in and 30 days, eight inches in two

[36:32 – 36:37]
weeks, or an inch of rainfall an hour.

[36:37 – 36:59]
And next slide. All right. Well, that concludes our presentation tonight. I’m looking in the chat real quick to see if there are any questions. And I’ll wait just a second. If you do have questions, please feel free to submit them using the question and answer button down at the bottom of your screen. And we’ll just give it a couple minutes here, to see if any questions, pop up.

[36:59 – 37:21]
I do see one from Mike Bell. Mike, good to hear from you. I hope you’re well. I hope your wife’s well. A repeat of this presentation. How will I how can I see a repeat of this presentation, but will be making this presentation available at VCEmergency.com on the La Conchita page. We’ll have the recorded versions that include the Spanish interpretation as well as the ASL interpretation as well.

[37:21 – 37:32]
So it’ll all be posted up there more than likely by tomorrow afternoon. And I’m just looking to see if there are any other questions that pop up here.

[37:32 – 37:55]
And I’m not seeing any. So with that, again, I thank everyone for participating tonight. And I’ll hand it back to Kim. [Kim Delacort] Thanks, Patrick. Thank you for joining us. We really enjoyed spending time with you this evening, and I hope that everyone in La Conchita understands how much, we support and and want to help you through this preparedness process.

[37:55 – 38:15]
Thank you to our leadership who, came to join us tonight and to our panelists who shared some wonderful and helpful information. And so as we leave you, we just leave a list of the resources that were shared tonight. And we invite you to invite your friends if they missed this opportunity to view it when we post it online at VCemergency.

[38:15 – 38:27]
And thank you so much for joining us. Good night La Conchita.