Paradise Lost, Lessons Gained For Laguna Beach

LAGUNA BEACH, CA —A handful of local dignitaries visited what remains of Paradise, CA earlier this year. The sobering question, as City Manager John Pietig, Mayor Bob Whalen, Fire Chief Mike Garcia, and police Capt. Jeff Calvert all agreed on, was has Laguna Beach done enough to keep this from happening at home?

The memory of the 1993 wildfire that decimated 441 homes in Laguna Beach is never far from the City Council's thoughts. The similarities between Paradise and Laguna are many.

Approximately 25,000 people lived there. It's a windy, coastal spot, with only a few ways to exit the community.

"The town is not much bigger than Laguna Beach," Whalen said in a statement. "There are only ashes and chimneys in entire neighborhoods."

Paradise fell victim to the Camp Fire in Nov. 2018. Since then, Laguna Beach's Wildfire Mitigation and Fire Safety Committee has studied the deadly blaze, reviewing Paradise's failed fire prevention plans, evacuation routes and emergency alerts.

Emergency Operations Coordinator Jordan Villwock spoke of the incident with the Daily Pilot. The city council received a briefing from the Butte County Fire Department after the ashes settled.
"We wanted to absorb everything that they had to share," he said. The information shared by people who were there was "really raw information," he said. Ideas were shared, and stories in what Villwock described as "a long day, but worth it."

The communications mechanism Paradise relied upon failed when the fast-moving Camp Fire leveled cell towers. That CodeRed to send texts, emails and calls were not enough. This has made Laguna look again to its AlertOC "life-or-death" emergency communication system.

The city now looks to go beyond just the Nixle powered community alert system to adding speakers to blast messages "citywide, to nearly 23,000 residents and the millions of tourists who visit every year," the Pilot reported. Alerts, along with AM/FM radio messages that could be initiated by the county, only go as far as having the people who live there be prepared.

Laguna Beach has made it easy for residents to understand the facts of living there.

Hazards exist, from flooding to mudslides, earthquakes to fires. Understanding that and developing action plans are a part of Laguna life, Villwock has said.

The devastating fire has happened here before, it can happen again. Reducing the city's risk is at the forefront of this task force's mind.

"Let’s be honest, Laguna Beach has beautiful topography, but with that topography comes hazards," Villwock told the Times. "We don’t like to go around and say ‘Be scared to live in Laguna Beach,' but you have to understand the hazards."

Photo: Courtesy, City of Laguna Beach