Sheriff Starts Election Year Under the Weather

by Carrie Bartoldus

Astoria, Or – When Clatsop County Sheriff Tom Bergin filed in November for re-election in the May 2008 primaries, little did he realize a storm of hurricane force magnitude was forming off the coastline, waiting to hurtle itself on his community and that he would be standing at the epi-center of its aftermath.

After the destruction of a storm, along with sorting out the debris comes sorting out accountability. While the December 2007 Storm itself was handled aptly by Emergency Operations Center (EOC), which in turn is managed by the Sheriff’s department, the community began to rebuild but rebuilding might not go as smoothly as hoped, some fear.

As agencies began taking stock of the buildings and projects that had been damaged and attending meetings to find out what was needed to be done to get funding for repairs they found out that the required paperwork had not been completed in order for certain projects to qualify for federal grants. The phrase people began hearing over and over again was that Clatsop County did not have a FEMA approved Disaster Mitigation Plan registered with the federal government, and, inevitably, people wanted to know why one wasn’t filed and who to blame.

As head of emergency operations Sheriff Bergin’s department is responsible for the development of the hazard mitigation plan. A division of his department received the correspondence from the state advising it when the plan came into action in 2003, as well as the dates when classes were offered for the development of county plans. In 2006, the County signed a Memorandum of Understanding, committing to develop a Hazard Mitigation Plan. Gene Strong was hired ¾ time to head Emergency Services Coordination and was given the task of developing the disaster mitigation plan. In September of 2007 Columbia River Estuary Study Taskforce (CREST) was contracted to do the assessments needed for the plan to progress further.

Not the first time Sheriff’s ability post-crisis is questioned
According to media reports of that time, in the aftermath of the December 2006 storm that left homes throughout Clatsop County without power for 3-4 days and the KAST radio station off the air for two days Sheriff Bergin faced the possibility of being asked to relinquish responsibility for the county’s emergency response system. It was Sheriff Bergin’s decision not to open the EOC during or after the storm leaving most of the county without a point of contact.

At the time of that storm Bergin commented, in the Daily Astorian, that the situation was “borderline,” but didn’t feel the storm and its aftermath presented enough danger to go forward and activate the EOC. “I didn’t consider this to be a disaster,” he said. “There were no lives in danger and no threat to property.” He remained in constant contact with other emergency providers, as well as the local Red Cross, to make sure anyone in need was getting help, was his explanation. “Some people are making a bigger deal out of this than it was,” Bergin justified, “It was never beyond our control.”

Others, however, had a different perspective on the situation. Commissioners and county staff reported the situation as potentially dangerous because of the lack of information available to the public, and poor communications between the various local authorities.

According to reported accounts of the event, County Health Director Joell Archibald had told the commissioners that the department was called by Providence Seaside Hospital worried about fuel for its generator. When the hospital was referred to the EOC it got no response to its phone call. “At no time was public health ever called by emergency management about any of the needs in the county,” Archibald had commented at the time to according to reports in the Daily Astorian, adding, “I would categorize this as a major event.”

Other Departments Respond Well
Ed Wegner’s Public Works department was able to function with its own radios and cell phones. Alone it coordinated with state highway and city crews and power companies to clear the roads. But with the number of trees and lines down and the length of the outages, he said, “there is some concern that maybe we should have done something a little different.”

Immediately following the 2006 storm it was reported in the Daily Astorian that then Clatsop County Commissioner Gaebel made the comment that she saw “pros and cons” with leaving the EOC with the sheriff’s office. Gaebel had made the recommendation for the committee that was subsequently formed to study whether the county’s emergency management services should remain within the sheriff’s office. Some counties have stand-alone emergency departments, while others place them under their public works or even health departments. At the time it was decided for the services to stay with the Sheriff’s office.

Based on the concerns of the aftermath of the storm of 2006 a new approach was developed and the Emergency Operations Center that responded to the December 2007 storm performed with glowing success earning praise in city and county meetings throughout Clatsop County, responding to the needs of a community hit by sustained winds of 129 mph for over a 20 hour period. The EOC continued operating for the following days and then weeks overseeing the operations of multi-jurisdictions.

At one point over 30,000 people were without electricity and the EOC was able to coordinate efforts with the power company and crews to get emergency generators to hospitals, stores, shelters and other points designated as priorities while other crews worked on clearing roads and power lines. The EOC worked on providing communication and coordinating the efforts of over seven enforcement agencies, four fire departments, and the multiple agencies of five cities as well as county agencies.

Disaster Response vs Disaster Mitigation
The problem is that disaster response is not disaster mitigation. It is like playing a game with half of a game plan and while one part of the game plan was being fully developed another part was left hanging. The big problem is disasters don’t wait to be part of a schedule and often hit before both sides have a chance to be fully developed.

Disaster Mitigation planning was quietly left to develop as Disaster Response took the limelight. The reason for this has not been fully explained on an official level, as yet. Looking over last year’s budget requests and performance measures for the sheriff’s department no request was made for additional staffing for disaster mitigation planning, nor did the Sheriff mentioned it as a goal for a performance measure for his emergency planning division.

The Sheriff has yet to respond to questions regarding why the disaster mitigation planning was not mentioned in his budget, however it can be assumed that with CREST being hired to do a county wide assessment for the mitigation planning and Gene Strong attending the state’s mitigation training sessions, the sheriff reasonably assumed the plan was well underway to being completed.

The good news is that the County has signed a Memorandum of Understanding regarding committing to a Mitigation Plan. With that in place a project that would qualify to be financed or partially financed through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program can be given special consideration through Region 10’s regional office, according to Dennis Sigrist, State Hazard Mitigation Officer with Oregon Emergency Management.

City officials and county departments have not reported any funding difficulties, at this point, with rebuilding any storm damaged public owned properties. Projects which would fall under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program can be approved after the Clatsop County mitigation plan has been approved by FEMA.

Jan 15, 08:38 am | Carrie Bartoldus