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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Full press conference: Jackson County officials address emergency alerts and FEMA

Credit: KDRV
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Full press conference: Jackson County officials address emergency alerts and FEMA
Full press conference: Jackson County officials address emergency alerts and FEMA

Jackson County officials addressed concerns about the use of emergency alerts during the Almeda Fire and talked about the next steps for recovery.

Alert system was not activated.

Joining us now is the news conference, we're going to take it live.

>> several items to go over today, i would ask you to hold your questions until they are done, there will be plenty of time for questions at the very end.

And we're going to kick it off with chief bob horton from fire district three, and he also represents the jackson county fire defense board.

Chief?

>> good afternoon, everybody.

Gary, thank you very much.

My name is bob horton, h o r t o n, i'm the fire chief for jackson county fire day care three and serve our region as jackson county's fire defense board chief.

I wanted to speak a little bit about the process of -- we mentioned yesterday you had heard from incident commander from the state fire marshal's blue team that he was transitioning control of the fire back to local control, or local fire authorities.

I just wanted to speak briefly to what that system is and how it works.

We are part in oregon of the oregon fire defense system, it's a mutual aid system where we have resource sharing across the state during an emergency.

Our local fire agencies regardless of jurisdiction, participate in the rogue valley incident mutual aid system.

So when our resources are strapped in any one of our given communities, meaning allocated to an emergency that needs more resources, we can ask for help from one of our neighboring agencies.

Here in the rogue valley, jackson conte specifically we generally, it's a boundary drop system, it's an automatic aid, the closest fire resource to the emergency is going to be dispatched to it.

When all the resources locally are assigned to the incident and more are necessary, we'll call to josephine county, they'll send a strike team or task force to help us manage that type of an emergency.

When we're past all of the rogue valley resources and all of our mutual aid and we have structures and lives that remain at risk, those types of incidents go, we send a request and it's run through the fire defense board system and myself in this case for the alameda fire, and obenchain fires, we send a request to the state fire marshal's office in salem, through the agency operations center saying we have this emergency, we have these lives and these structures that are being threatened, we are out of help and we need more to come our way.

That form gets send up electronically over to salem, with the help of the state fire marshal's rep here in our area.

And gets -- goes in front of the governor's office and that's a conflagration request, and a conflagration act is initiated.

And that happens quite quickly in this example.

Last tuesday when the alameda and obenchain fires broke loose, all your local agencies with the fire defense system, we were on a conference call that morning.

We were briefed by the chief deputy state fire marshal about the state of oregon at that moment in time.

And at that time they there had already been four conflagration fires over the last couple days.

There are three incident management teams for the state fire marshal's office system, just to give you perspective.

And there had already been four conflag grace fires.

We knew the weather conditions were extraordinary, we knew that we were facing a great deal of risk in our local community, we were briefed by the state fire marshal's office system that there wasn't a lot of help available across the state should there be a fire in our community.

Our local resources bathed on that risk staffed up, we initiated to most local fire agencies here.

If not all, initiated emergency recall of all of our--duty firefighters to come in and staff our equipment.

With we're proud to say we had an extra return rate for everybody available to work, came in to work.

This is before the fire broke.

Just on the risk.

We knew we needed to have that many fire apparatus available to help our community.

If not for them coming back in, we would be talking about a much worse disaster than we're already dealing with.

So those folks came in as the fire had emerged and we had the conflagration request, we were immediately raised to a high priority.

When they hook at these, the folks in the administration office have to decide where are the limited number of scarce resources that we have in this community, and the state going to go.

And they must -- that was incident commander scott majors and the blueh blue team who sent the folks to our local community and the initial strike team that came from the portland, multnomah area to help us with our event.

As more resources came availablt also add, local firefighters that were out of the area, out of the valley with their families camping, on vacation trips, loaded up their families, loaded up their trips and came back because our community needed their help.

So hater that night more local firefighters also joined in on the firefight.

State fire marshal's team takes over that management of that incident.

Local fire chiefs, we signed that declaration of a 480 to the state fire marshal to manage those resources to give them the legal authority to manage resources inside our community.

Who fire chiefs returned to managing day-to-day 9-1-1 fire service activities that we would generally do, and the incident that we've been talking about here is managed by this incident management team.

When that incident management team is now comfortable that the fire objectives have been met, the team has accomplished the tasks that we set forth to them, they start to demobilize that process and then return control to the local fire authorities, the local fire departments and districts to go back to managing not just what is left of this event on our own, but the rest of the activity that we see in our emergency response system here in jackson county.

So when you heard incident commander scott majors mention we were going to be transitioning control back to local fire authorities, it's putting them, that responsibility back to the jurisdiction's fire chief that when there's a new fire that happens in your community, you're responsible for sending the resources to it and it wouldn't fall under that incident management team.

Because we're dealing with a local disaster, and you've heard and been reporting on what that declaration means and what that looks like, the actual alameda event has been transitioned over to control in terms of that disaster recovery piece to the county, to jackson county officials who have -- we have a much broader set of objectives now that we have to render the area safe, so folks can return to their businesses or their homes, those that are still there.

And get us through now what's going to be a long recovery process.

The fire is out, the fire objectives have now been met, and the returns to local control, it doesn't mean the hazards are all gone.

And we just want to make sure we put emphasis to that through you to our community that there still remains hazards that are being mitigated by the appropriate authorities to manage such hazards, hazardous materials type hazards, power line issues, gas issues, these various utilities, these essential services.

So until those are rendered safe, there still remains hazards.

So i want to make sure the message is really clear, that just because the fire is out, doesn't mean it's safe to reenter the zone.

That's what you've been hearing from a lot of officials that we want our community to be aware of.

In time, folks are seeing or reporting in on various hot spots that they encounter while in their travels.

What we ask our community just like any other day that we would do, and they're doing a great job of this right now, our community is, activating the 9 system, reporting that information to emergency communications of southern oregon, ucso, our 9-1-1 dispatchers triage that like we would any other time.

As folks have been identifying what they believe to be either hot spots or hazards that are either affiliated with the alameda fire scar zone, or anywhere else in our county reporting that information, we want them to continue to use that process.

I'll be available to answer questions you have about that process or that assistance.

Thank you, guys.

>> thank you, chief.

We'll now hear from the director of the emergency operations center for jackson county.

You can talk about fema, the process forward, then also concerns over notifications and the county.

>> good afternoon, i am normally the roads and parks director for jackson county, but on tuesday afternoon i was asked to serve as the director of the emergency operations center.

So it's a dmu role for me.

Let's start with the issue, we have received phone calls about today, that is the county's emergency notification system.

The way the notification system works, under oregon law, only law enforcement personnel have the authority to implement an evacuation.

So the law enforcement doesn't make that notice in a vacuum.

They depend information from the field.

So an event like this, the fire departments call in and say we need an evacuation of this particular area, the law enforcement reviews that area and if the decision is made to support that action, which almost always is, maps are produced and a narrative written and an alert is sent out.

In an event like this, it was challenging because we had four different jurisdictions of law enforcement that were impacted by the -- five different jurisdictions of law enforcement that were impacted by this event.

And the event moved extremely fast.

And that produced real chal can evenings on those notifications.

The system is known as ever grinch, it is a -- bridge, and it is a land line system and a cell phone system.

It's used in many parts of the country and many other counties use this system.

This are other systems available including the popular -- the one many of us grew up with, the emergency alert system that sends the tones on the radio and t.v., that uses radio and t.v.

Platform.

And using the system, choosing which system to use speed and accuracy are strong considerations.

Some systems are more of a rifle approach where it targets a specific area, other systems are more of a shotgun where it captures a very large area.

I just would touch on the difference in those and the importance of that during an event like this.

And probably the best way to do that is by way of example.

The following day when there was a fire on the greenway, the city of central point, the entire city was put under an evacuates order of level three.

So the city had to evacuate.

What happened at that point was the entire transportation system stopped.

The freeway stopped, all surface streets stopped, everything stopped.

And nothing was moving.

Fire personnel couldn't get into the site and people couldn't get out of the site.

And so when systems are being evaluated on which one to use, how that information is portrayed and the level of detail is an important consideration.

As i noted, the speed of this event was very challenging, real time communications were a challenge as firefighters were literally fighting for their lives and saving the lives of people.

The sheriff's office was knocking on doors and using loud speakers to physically evacuate the area and the bottom line is there is things to be learned from this process, there are things that the county is going to have to review, and when this emergency is over, when things have calmed down to a level that we can true hi understand what happened, the county will be conducting a thorough debrief on these systems, evaluating the pros and cons of each, and evaluating our performance and how we did and changes will be made if necessary.

So changing topics.

Yesterday we received notice that the president has signed the disaster declaration for this area.

That declaration can come in several different levels, and the individual and a public assistance level.

It went to the lowest level possible, and that is a good thing for jackson county in that individual level allows individual citizens to participate in this process and be hopefully reimbursed and provided financial aid to rebuild homes and to help them recover from this event.

Jackson county has requested a type three fema all hazards incident management team to assist us in this recovery process.

And what this team is is the team, large team that is composed of people that do this.

This is jackson county's first shot at something like this, and around the country, especially in the hurricane region, there are people that do this repeatedly.

And these the teams can come in and assist us with all phases of recovery.

So we have requested that type three team and we're hoping to get them.

We received notice that has been approved at the oregon emergency management level and we're waiting to hear back from fema.

Lastly on that topic, we would encourage anyone who suffered a loss from this to go to www.disasterassistance.gov.

This is the fema site, and it allows you to register a loss, and that helps get this process started.

So anyone who has suffered a loss, go to windchillww.disasterassista... ov.

The last thing i'll touch on from the emergency operations center is the evacuation shelter.

On the night of tuesday, when the fire hit, we had nearly 2,000 people that sheltered at the evacuation center on that first night.

Those numbers decreased fairly quickly on the following days, and we are having about 250 people overnighting at the shelter, that number has increased now to about 300.

So more people are tending, finding shelter at the expo site.

We are providing shelter, food, showers, medical support, and counseling for the people there.

And the facility is also being used as a donation drop-off point.

Tonight at 8:00 the red cross will assume responsibility for the overnight sheltering portion of that center, but the county will remain responsible for all the other come opponents, including the food and counseling, medical support and everything else.

But the red cross is assuming the overnight sheltering part of that tonight at 8 chock, which we're grateful are for, that provides relief to us.

With that i'll turn it over to gary again.

>> thank, john.

I know there are a lot of follow-up questions to that topic.

Many of them.

Right now we've got sheriff nathan sickler, he's going to give us quite a few updates and we'll just let him walk you through that.

Thank you.

>> good afternoon, sheriff nate sickler, thank you for being here today and thank you for joining us on the live broadcast.

So i'm going to go in order of events that we've been talking about currently.

The origin of the fire in north ashland is still under investigation.

I know the ashland police department and detectives from surrounding agencies are helping with that investigation, and there's no new information to report on the status of that investigation.

The number of confirmed victims of the fire in the alameda zone is still three.

We have not had any additional victims at this time.

We are still doing missing persons work within the alameda and the obenchain fire, and again at this time, we have zero critical missing individuals at the time of this broadcast.

Now, this number could fluctuate at any time during the day, i just want to be transparent, we will start investigating those if they come in.

I just want everyone to know that.

As of this broadcast, the latest information i have is zero critical missing which means we believe they were in the area of the fire at the time of the fire and we cannot hoe indicate.

That is great news.

We are following up on missing persons who have been reported through our system.

I think the number was five.

But we do not believe them to be in at the time of the fire, there's no evidence to show they were in the fire at the time of the fire.

So we're just working to hoe indicate them.

Asking for the community's help, if you know somebody who was in the fire zone and you are concerned about their well-being, or where their weatherabouts are, go on to our online portals and fill out those forms for us.

If you were in the fire zone and you are safe, we also have portals for that to help us cross reference and to determine people within the fire zone are safe.

The southwest section of phoenix has been reopened today.

So we're very happy to report that.

And that's going to be an area south of dano near rose to the south into phoenix and west of main street.

And we have detailed maps, so we're going to be able to get a lot of residents back home and we're happy to do that for our public.

We're still working on opening up other parts daily, and we're making a progress in other areas such as talent and other areas around phoenix.

Yousar, the urban search and rescue team that was dispatched as a fema resource, they're still working the scene diligently, they have 105 members on the ground working both the alameda fire and now today they have been shifted apart of their resources to the obenchain fire to help us with assessment of sites that were destroyed by fire there as well.

So we're happy to have that resource, there's about 105 of them working the two scenes today.

Their produce gres has been amazing.

They're working much faster than we abanticipated.

Of course never having to deal with an event of this magnitude, it's hard to know what to expect, but the team has been phenomenal.

Just want to talk about some of the things that we're -- that have been accomplished by our staff with regards to the alameda fire.

We have come meeted over a thousand escorts of citizens into the burned area or level three zone to help them retrieve important items for their well-being such as medications, he gal papers or other things they need to continue on.

We're going to continue to do this as long as we can.

There may be a transition period this weekend where we start to transition the back a bit, and start working on trying to get more things open in the city of phoenix.

We have worked with the public to provide access to the residence in the holiday r v park, we're looking at trying to open up additional areas of talents as soon as maybe tomorrow, and maybe at the south or the middle of talent near valley view, we'll make hopeful hi more now.

I'll send it out today or tomorrow.

We're working on trying to open areas of commerce within the city of phoenix, such as ray's food mace, and things of that, but there's serious traffic conversations we have to take into account and we have to develop a plan that we're very sensitive that we need to get to some economy open back in phoenix for the residents living there.

I do want to remind people, the access that southwest portion of phoenix is doing to be through south staple road and windsor heefs and houston road, the pack records through phoenix, there will not be access through highway 89.

Again, we are continuing 24-hour presence in the alameda scar, in the level three area.

We have the national guard air dpawrd and army guarded to.

We have 70 on the ground currently and we hope to have 110 by tomorrow.

That's going to help us with the traffic control points and some of the efforts that are going to take place over the next several weeks.

So that was all the information i have for the alameda fire.

I think, do we want to open that up to questions right now?

I can take questions that might be direct first, then we can move forward.

Bill?

>> when it becomes clear everbrimming system was not getting the information out adequate hi, why was not the emergency alert system put into use?

>> i cannot speak as to every detail as to which system was used and why not, but i can tell you this.

I was down there at the initial along with some of the other chiefs, and fire chiefs, and it was dprid hock traffic all through phoenix, talent, and i-5at points.

The everbridge system targets a smaller portion of the community, and had we sent out broad alerts that were more dperk, but maybe a little more fortive, not discounting that system, those roads would have mocked any more we can't say what could have occurred, about it could have been tragic.

Any additional pressure on those roadway systems, according to my staff on the frowned, would have not been good whatsoever.

So there's a lot of things that go into those skiingses, and as we move through the process, i feel a debrief and analysis of all that was done that was really good, because i can tell you i've heard countless attempts, stories of people were killed out of burning build withings and dnr the flies are giving me the business today.

Has countless -- anyway.

There's countless stories of officers have risk nair hives going into burning areas to pull people out of their houses.

And to me, that's the best heard you can get is when somebody is pulling you from a burping building and saving your life.

That happens oaf and over and over again this quick unfolding style that was moving at think miles per hour through our south county.

So i think while there's certainly a good time and i do think we can always learn from events and we certainly should, expb to see what we can to better, hopeful hi we never have this again.

I think have all the information before we start answering questions and have the ability to dissect that information and make reasonable use of that information, it's better than speculating what should have been done and shouldn't have been done.

>> questions?

Are you clear now on the chain of manned and who wouldn't make an a e s certification?

>> i'm doing too take wildland fire for example.

Typically we have more time to work, that's a situation we're quite familiar with in jackson county.

We've been spoked out for many summers.

What happens is a fire starts, people start working on where the fire is foog, the weather patterns, the fire, behavioral people, the firefighters get a look at this and they hook a at what the threats are the to the nutrient and they get to sit, and we traw this trigger point, and when it hits here when it's level two, when it hirts three, that level three, that gives our staff time to to notifications in a methodical manner, and this is a perfect case scenario.

And send out all the alerts, certificate them out to the public.

This case moved extremely farce.

And so the alert system will be a conversation i guess as we move forward, but at the time that fire advises our staff that, hey, this is a recommendation and we get evaluate that, what we're capable of as far as doing evacuations, and how that system goes out, i don't necessarily pick the alert system that's used, everbridge has been using the county for many years.

But that would not be necessarily the decision made by law enforcement as to when system -- [question from audience] >> what the county uses?

>> the county makes that official?

>> the county officials, whether it's the emergency management or the commissioners as to what system is used would be their choice.

But again, we don't know that, not using that system was a detriment to the situation, or if it was possible.

So there's that.

[question from audience] i believe so.

We can get clarification, but i automatic not in charge of the system we use to prescribe to send out alerts.

We wanted to do the best job for our public in every situation and in this case not having the roadways completely gridlocked, so emergency responders could get in and get people out seems -- certainly seems like a benefit to our public today.

>> were there any [indiscernible] >> i don't know.

I would -- wasn't in charge of sending alerts and i don't live in talent so i wouldn't have gotten.

The everbridge system, if you sign up you get the alerts if it's in your area and it also goes to land lines.

[question from audience] >> i don't know where alerts were sent at this time, that's why i think a debrief and finding out what worked well and what didn't is important as we move forward.

>> can you clarify the missing people situation, what it takes to elevate somebody into the critical missing people cat ger?

>> if someone has an address within the fire zone, location that was burned through, or lived there, and we can't find them, they're critical, identified as a critical missing.

Sir, over here, then back to you, don.

Go ahead.

[question from audience] we'll talk after the press conference.

[question from audience] you know, right now we had a report that was released yesterday from the urban search and rescue team.

That report was premature.

It may cause confusion.

But at their time of report is about 2300 structures they have evaluated.

And so to go back through and qualify, quantify what a structure, versus a residence, we're not to that point yet.

Don?

>> sheriff, how many people are actually subscribed through everbridge, cellular and over land lines?

>> i don't have that data.

I know we've had a substantial increase in subscriptions since this fire.

>> you can look it up.

>> any -- we'll let john answer that.

Any questions for me specifically?

Yes.

>> that fire that happened in central point that cut the -- put the city on alert, is there any cause?

>> that fire is still under investigation by the medford police department.

>> do we know -- >> i believe it's considered suspicious, potentially human caused, but under investigation.

>> if someone doesn't have access to a computer or an internet right now, how can they get access to that [indiscernible] >> you know, i think we're in the process of setting up in resources but town hall ever talk more about that.

Any other questions for the sheriff's operations or police operations or recovery operations within the leamed fire zone?

>> any indication when people night be able to get back to them?

>> we've opened up the southwest portion of phoenix that was larger than affected pie fire, but surrounded by -- so that's opening up.

That's going to be a lot of closely at the portion of talent especifically the middle area of talent, and these are constant conversations that our command post and staff are having with officials, to the officials, fire, and police.

So as soon as we can get it open i promise you we want to do that.

We are anticipating -- i should say fm -- the thicks we anticipated on taking a long-time have taken less time than we anticipated so we're very happy with the progress being made with regards to that.

>> i have one last question, about structures.

Just so make sure i'm clear, each structure, we're not sure if those are individual apartment units or an operate building?

>> correct.

I don't have that data and haven't had a chance to look through it, neither have our county officials.

That's being done as we speak, or operation fast link, hopeful hi they'll be able to provide the public or at least to exact number of house and buildings that were affected businesses as soon as we can.

[question from audience] usar looks at a site and says there's no home there, and they destroyed.

There's a partial building and they say it's damaged.

Then we have to have our counter assessors and -- code enforcement assess task force.

That's the 10,000-foot view and there's going to be a more detailed assessment that is taking place by our county officials, city officials.

>> thank you.

>> a couple questions that i can provide more data.

Don, i don't have the numbers on who was signed up foreverbridge before this fire.

But i can say since this fire started we've had over 40,000 people sign up foreverbridge in the last week in joseph and jackson counties come pained.

I don't know the number we could probably find that out, though.

>> the question was asked about no internet.

One of the things that's critical in this process to develop a resource center so a place where people can do to contact their insurance agent, to contact d m v to get their driver's license replaced.

There's a whole series of things when you had to run out of your house at a moment's note, that we'll be help you with.

We'll have computer access, we don't have a dater but her hoping to get something shortly where that can ke our.

We're going to provide opportunities for people without entity access to do that.

For the question over here, so the u s a r team is going through their work, in addition to that, the county, with all the building officials and the county is now dog a house by how damage -- a preliminary damage assessment and that preliminary deament says to getting reimbursed through fema true that you process.

They're going house by house.

Unfortunatelyis a fairly simple process, because this fire was so hot, there's very few buildings that are damaged partially, they're either or they're not.

Oftentimes in a fire you have a structure that may or not be ma builtable, and this one most of the time they take a pick of a loft that has no house and that process doing to do quickly.

>> is this a county position that the system was evaluated and rejected on the day of the fire ?r and if so, who made the decision or was it 97 considered and the other system used solely on the -- so the mat form the county uses report know is ofbridge.

We're not to do this, i can't answer that.

And as sheriff sick her noted, per going to do a third debriefing when this is ton to see what system is best, do you.

>> hue decisions is that doing to be in is.

>> emergency management and the board of commissioners.

>> i don't know?

>> i appreciate the work on everbridge, but i received deion sanders of us, many people therapy piing up a middle of know where having no idea what's going on in their neighborhood.

They have a car rateio, they have maybe television, some what of trying information and nothing came.

Why can't we could that?

>> bill, i think that's a great question.

If there's multiple mat forms that reach people in different ways, i think during a debridgestone/firestone, that is one of knows critical questions that have to be appsed.

Each new to this, but i am on you interested in it soirchl menopause dog reading.

I've seen many catastrophes in other cities where the e i s has come under criticism because most people get their information via phone.

It's a critical -- is there a new system we need to look at, and the county will be conducting this.

>> is there any sort of even [indiscernible] >> a debrief will occur when the emergency is over.

Right now we are changing evacuation levels, we changed them today, the sheriff talked about that on how we took this whole area here out of the level three.

We took portions of the south obenchain fire from level three to level two, this is a very active situation that's doing on right now, and now is the wrong time to do a debrief.

But it's going to come shortly.

We recognize this is a priority and we're doing to do this as soon as this emergency is over and we get our feet underneath us.

>> a few months before the fire you and i discussed how we would put shelter evacuees during a pandemic.

And i think [indiscernible] was that plan not used?

, the sheer number of suris?

And what happens when sheltering people that night?

>> so the -- during this event people were out of their house like that and they needed a place to go immediately.

So we stood up the expo center, one of the things that actually worked in our favor is we had the facility at expo was all set up to be a shelter for covid patients.

So should patients test positive for covid, they don't want to do back home, and they need a place to stay.

We had that facility all set up.

So we medium hi set, we can start putting people there.

We expected to film up that building, maybe.

But than stead we got about 2,000 people, and every space in the expo was filled pull of people.

So now as we're transitioning that that emergency shelter, which is where the definition is, it's an emergency shelter that was used during an evacuation.

And we hook at how to start ramping that down, options like putting people in motels and everything else is going to be something that's considered.

That's where fema and red cross gi give the county a big help in doing that.

>> when i was evacuated, i went [indiscernible] considered a temporary shelter, and they had only 100 beds, for people with disability?

The bottom line is we still don't have enough cots for everybody there.

A lot of people are sleeping in tints and sleeping wags and that kind -- bag and that kind of thing.

We're around 200 cots.

Most of the cots were reserved for people that were -- have trouble medically.

One of the things, and the sheriff has touched on this before, this was a needy population.

The population that was impacted by this fire was very needy, and what ended up coming to the shelter with a lot of people that needed medical care, medical assistance, the cost was resolved for those people, other people were asked to sleep on a sheepg bag, the cold ground or most people slept in their car that first night.

[question from audience] they're evaluating everything right now.

In order to say, did we do the right thing on this fire or not, we need to sit down and evaluate the systems and everything else.

As i noted before, there are positive, some svesha harris items have positive characteristics, other systems have negative, and positive characteristics.

There needs to be a debrief of all those things and right now is not the time to do that.

[question from audience] >> no, as i explained before, by state law sheriff stickler and the county is, once you move into the city, then chief law sen is and when you're in phoenix, they are, when you're in talent they are.

It's each law enforcement jurisdiction is responsible for their area, and they are the only one authorized to order an evacuation.

[question from audience] >> to order it and then the emergency management part of the county is the one that sends it, yes.

[question from audience] the emergency operation center was stood up when the fire was well underway.

So it's the emergency manager.

>> is there a reason she's not here?

>> she's busy deal with the emergency.

>> when you and i spoke about the evacuation center -- [question from audience] >> i was asked to leave the emergency operations center for covid.

>> one more question.

Does the emergency manager work by herself?

Does she have a team?

>> we have one emergency manager.

>> thank you guys.

A lot of great questions.

We're not going to solve that topic today.

It's noted when the middle of the crisis still, we still have people evacuated.

And once we can get into a dispassionate area, i'm sure there will be a full accounting of exactly the timeline and what methods were used and why they were used and so forth.

So if you could just give us grace on that, that would be awesome.

We appreciate people's patience as we work through this, i know it's been eight days since the fire started.

And we will keep you up to date as we go along and no doubt we'll have another one of these very soon.

We appreciate the public's interest obviously, high public interest, we appreciate the live feeds to speak directly to the people, and i know that our experts will be around to answer any other questions you may have after we're done here.

So

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