 I will now call the August 25th, 2020 special meeting of the Board of Supervisors to order. Will the clerk please call the roll. Good morning. Good morning. Supervisor Leopold. Here. Friend. Here. Coonerty. Here. McPherson. Here. And Chair Caput. Here. Okay. We'll have a moment of silence and prayer and a pledge of allegiance. And... Chair, I hope we'll think about the one life lost in the fire so far as we take our moment of silence. We've been very fortunate that not have a loss of life but one life is too many. Okay. Absolutely. Okay. Okay. In the United States, we're going to do the recommendation. Mr. Palacios, if you have any late additions or changes. There are no additions or changes to the agenda. Chair Caput. Okay. We'll go to agenda item number four. Consider resolution ratifying the proclamation of a local emergency for 2020 CZU lightning complex fires as proclaimed by the County Administrative Officer as Director of Emergency Services on August 19th, 2020 and take related actions as outlined in the memorandum of the County Administrative Officer. Resolution ratifying proclamation of local emergency. Are there any questions from board members or comments? Well. His microphone's not on. Microphone's not on. Yeah, your mic. Been a while, I guess. Sorry about that. Excuse me. Yesterday I toured some of our most devastated areas with Supervisor Coonerty and our CAO, Carlos Palacios and our Cal Fire Chief, Ian Larkin and others. And it's really indescribable in many ways. And I know some of our County team has lost their homes and so forth. This was mentioned. We've only had one life that has been lost to date that we know of and that's one too many. But boy, the sheer power of the fire was evident and everywhere we went. I have the utmost gratitude to the men and women of Cal Fire and the coordinated efforts that they're now putting together with our fire districts who are battling these fires. Sheriff Jim Hart and his team who have, I think close to 80 deputies out there on patrol, California Highway Patrol, State Office of Emergency Services, the California Guard, National Guard and all the other cooperating agencies who are working to contain the fire and serve the needs of our residents. I've been told, I think our County Council, Jason Heath, went to some of the distribution areas that some of our places he may want to comment. I might have asked him to please do so. It's just unbelievable with how many people are doing so much for 10 hour, 12 hour days continuously. I do think we had, we were fortunate to have a lot of pre-planning and disaster coordination. We have had disasters in the past in this County and what we've done in the recent years has been helpful to get us, help us get a grip at what we're doing today. I'm really proud of our County staff and the leadership of our CO and his staff for their incredible work in providing services to our impacted community. They provide daily, twice daily or a couple of times a day sometimes three times a day, updated information. And this is one of the troubling things is that some people who start spreading rumors this is happening, this is not happening. Please just go to an authorized source of information such as we're gonna hear from Chief Larkin here shortly about what is happening and what we're doing because what we're doing is really significant. And I just wanna thank the members of our community, the faith organizations that have opened up there, their organizations and local businesses and other groups who have provided food and shelter in some respect and sometimes to so many people. And I just wanna, the biggest message I wanna send it comes from Cal Fire Chiefs who have have a lot of experience from other fires and we're in for a long haul here. This is, I think we're starting to get a grip on it. We're gonna hear about that in a minute but this recovery is going to be a long process and one that we are committed to within this County and I can just assure everybody we're gonna do everything we can to give them factual information and updated information. And I just wanna thank to our state and federal partners who are working to get us more resources. We need them more than ever. I think we have at least a half a dozen helicopters now driving hundreds, thousands of gallons of water. We'll hear more about that. That's a critical activity that we need to do to fight this but it just can't be overstated how much dedication and professional effort has gone into in so many avenues to help the people of this County under some really dire situation. So I just wanna say thank you to so many people but it was disheartening but unbelievable how the people wanna stick together and help each other in this County. It's not surprising but it sure is impressive. Just wanted to make that statement. Thank you. Okay, Chair. Maybe we should have a presentation Chair from Carlos Palacios and the Chief. Okay. Yes. Thank you very much, Chair Caput, members of the Board. Carlos Palacios, County Administrative Officer. In my role as County Administrative Officer I also serve as Director of Emergency Services. On August 19th, I declared a local emergency proclamation due to the CZU August Lightning Complex fires which began on August 15th. When a local emergency is proclaimed by the Director of Emergency Services the County Code requires that the Board of Supervisors ratify the proclamation within seven days and that's why we are here today. I have asked our Chief Ian Larkin to come and give an update to the Board and the public on the status of the fire. And so he will do that at the present time. And then after that, your Board will take comments. Good morning, Chair Caput, members of the Board, Mr. Palacios and members of the public. Ian Larkin, I'm the Cal Fire Unit Chief here for the San Mateo Santa Cruz Unit and I'm also your County Fire Chief for the Santa Cruz County Fire Department. As Mr. Palacios said, in the late hours of August 16th and Sunday, August 17th, the San Mateo Santa Cruz Unit in both counties experienced a significant lightning event. From that event, we had 22 fires that were ignited by lightning throughout both counties. And if we can just scroll out on the map a little bit to get a much wider view. What I can say is as you look at you, if you can see the smaller red dots that are outside the perimeter, those were additional lightning strike fires that were caused by that event that came through. We were able to contain those smaller fires due to their geographical location. They were much easier to locate. The other fires outside or within that perimeter you see now in much more remote areas and had difficult access to get those. Excuse me, if you are on the team's call, please mute your phones and computers. We can hear you talking. So those remote areas, it was more difficult to get in and access those fires. So it basically took the commitment of all of our Cal Fire resources from our local unit, all 13 engines, our two bulldozers and all available crews that we had, which was at the time, two inmate crews and one firefighter hand crew. We had to staff those fires with minimum staffing, unfortunately, because of the number of fires in order to get them under control. We also reached out to our local cooperators within Santa Cruz County and San Mateo County to start a response as well and augmented our Cal Fire response. Fortunately, we were able to contain most of the small fires in some of those geographical areas but the larger fires in the remote areas, the resources just, they had to literally cut themselves into the, try to get into the fire and that took an exhaustive amount of time to try to get in there. Those fires continued to grow over the next couple of days. We immediately started asking for resources and to supplement and augment our initial attack responses. We did receive minimal resources because at the same time throughout the state of California, there was numerous other fires starting at the same time that were growing at a much rapid rate than what we had here locally. So that drew down the statewide mutual aid system, which is a very robust system here in the state of California. And we rely on that much of the time to help suppress these large fires. On August 19th, 18th, I'm sorry, it was very evident that we were outpacing ourselves as far as not getting the available resources we needed. We had already asked for a Type 3 incident management team to come in and assist us with the current fires and help us set up our plans organization and our logistical support for the fire resources that we had at scene. We had a lot of success at being able to maintain that status quo of about 250 to 300 firefighters. But it was evident that it was gonna outpace us so we requested a Cal Fire incident management team come in and supplement our response and assist us in managing this larger event. During the process of getting that team here, we had a significant wind event that occurred. We had a North Northeast wind that came over the fire. Most of the fires were a backing fire so they were in the ground fuels. They were not in the canopy, but that North Northeast wind kicked up embers into the canopy and started a crown fire in San Mateo County up in the North part of Empire, I'm sorry, China grade near the San Mateo County line on the, what they called the old Hall Road near the Buteno State Park. Those embers basically cast a large ember cast over the fire area and spread spot fires six miles in front of the main fire. They were dropping embers into the Boulder Creek area. At that point, we started to make evacuation notices. That night that fire burnt an approximate 40,000 acres on that one night. The team came in and assumed command the next morning and immediately started to implement new tactics and strategies based on our new fire perimeter. And we had already started augmenting those resources significantly that night during the time that we saw that this thing was expanding much more rapidly, we'd already had resources on order that just hadn't been here, but we just had to augment even more because we were new, we were gonna need more resources to combat this fire. So today we're at sitting currently at 78,000, I'm sorry, 78,869 acres. It's 17% contained. That containment is a direct result of the changing weather. The one factor that creates rapid fire rate and spread here in our area and most areas when you have these large complex fires is the wind. So the wind has subsided, it's favorable. It's coming out of the west, southwest. So when it's in a much milder rate, so it's not forcing the spread of the fire, it's actually pushing the fire back on itself in some areas, which allowed us to get in and get some containment lines in and get a better control of that. So the 17% containment, along with the additional resources and the weather, we're making very, very good progress out there on the fire line. We're able to put some indirect line in where we're putting line out in front of the fire. We're able to do some small firing operations in a controlled environment to tie in those lines so that we're not in that very steep treacherous terrain. This fire is burning in very, very steep drainages and things that are very dangerous to get firefighters into. The other impact that we're having were day 10 into this fire. Yeah, I think it's day 10. And the trees and the vegetation out there have been exposed to fire over these periods of time and it's starting to make it very dangerous for the firefighters that are out in that area, let alone the members of the public that remained in the fire area and did not evacuate. So those trees are coming down daily. They're a constant threat. There is potential for some of those trees if they're burning near the fire's edge can fall and go across the fire line. So we're out there diligently trying to mitigate those hazards as we're trying to put in perimeter control. We still continue to have 25,000 structures threatened. We have confirmed through our damage inspection that we have 330 structures that had been destroyed. Of those 330 structures, 319 of those structures are in Santa Cruz County. Currently to date, we have 1,611 personnel assigned to the incident. And as Supervisor McPherson stated, yesterday was a good day for us. We had some lifting of the smoke column and we were able to get helicopters in and make significant progress with our water dropping capabilities. Yesterday alone, we dropped over 200,000 gallons of water. We timed out all of our aircraft that were assigned. And when we say time out, we flew them the maximum hours that they had available to them. They're limited for the number of hours they can fly each day. They can fly seven hours of flight time. So we timed them out yesterday, which is a good thing. We still don't have any fixed wing. The fixed wing are a little more difficult because of the smoke column. The smoke hasn't lifted enough, but our air tankers have not made any drops in the last day due to that smoke column. But we'll continue to fly those helicopters daily as we have a good air and I can get them in there to drop. We currently still have in both counties about 68,000 people evacuated. That's a large number of people and the team is doing everything they can to make the environment safe enough and make sure that we have good control lines in to make sure that we don't have any rapid spread of this fire before we start releasing or allowing people back into their home. So it's a difficult situation to be in but we're airing on the side of caution and safety of the public and having those members of the public out of those areas can drastically help us in our effort to make sure we have good containment lines in before we allow folks back in. That's kind of the brief update. I'll just kind of give you a brief overview of the map real quick. The real concerns that they still have are the highway nine corridor, which are on the eastern portion of the fire. They're in there doing the containment line today. They did a few little firing operations yesterday just to tie in some lines, especially down in the Felton area of Fall Creek State Park. So they're hopefully gonna have that operation all tied in today. The fire is currently backing down Felton Empire grade road towards the community of Felton, but there is a dozer line in there and containment line and they're gonna build some additional depth on that line by doing a small firing operation to burn out that unburnt fuel between the main fire and the fire's edge. The Bonnie Dune area, we're making good progress in the Bonnie Dune area. They're still doing point to point structure protection and they've got some good perimeter control in that area now getting dozer lines put in and trying to go direct where they can. So I'm hoping to see some additional percentage of containment in that Bonnie Dune area over the next few days. We still have some folks that are still in Bonnie Dune that we got word today that a lot of them are having difficulty in maintaining water and feed for their livestock that they still have in place there. So I've been in contact with the team. The team has been in contact with the EOC. So we're gonna try to get them some support out there and see if we can get maybe a fuel tender or something out there that they can buy fuel from to help support their generator operations so that they can water their animals and maybe get some feed to them so that they can support that so we don't have a large loss of livestock in that area. The last thing that I just wanted to touch on, I know there's a lot of folks that feel that they're starved for information. We've been very diligent in our pursuit of getting information out there, but I just want to give folks a few items where they can get information. They can just search out if you have an app store to get the CZU Twitter application and just follow CZU Twitter. We post all of our updates and any new information on the CZU Lightning Complex to that. We also, at our San Mateo Santa Cruz Facebook page, post that same information to that page as well. And then if you don't have any of the Facebook or any of the social media and you have a way to search the internet, you can just search CZU Lightning Complex and that will bring up all the factual data sheets that are out there. The other one, if people want to see what evacuation zones have been implemented, there is a link you can go to if you just in your search engine or a space bar, you can just type in smco.community.zonehaven and that will take you to a link. It's smco.community.zonehaven and that will take you to a map that will actually show you all the zones and we'll be using that same application when we start to do the repopulation once the law enforcement and fire personnel from Incident Management Team 3 have determined that it's safe to repopulate any areas. So with that, if you have any questions, I would be more than happy to answer them. Great. Let's go to Supervisor Coonerty next because his area has been affected quite. Chair, Matt, I suggest that if Sheriff Hart is on the call that we get a presentation from him as well before we go to questions from board members. Before we go to questions. Yes, Sheriff Hart is available and he's on the call and he can give an update as well. And then perhaps then you can go to questions from board members. Good morning, board and CAO plus Chair of Coonerty. And I just want to touch on the evacuation first. My office, along with a lot of local agencies and some mutual aid agencies were able to evacuate about 50,000 people out of the San Lorenzo Valley when this fire initially happened and then eventually Scotts Valley. And we were able to do that efficiently without clogging up the roadways. There was no injuries. There was no reported accidents. And we were able to get everybody safe. And that was with a lot of coordination with Cal Fire. We are working very closely with Cal Fire. I have a lot of staff that are assigned to the command post. We are in constant communication with them. And we're really going off of their lead. If Chief Larkin or Chief C who's in charge of team three makes recommendations for something that then we're following those recommendations very closely. We have been blessed with a lot of mutual aid. And so how mutual aid works is you exhaust your office resources then your county resources. And then we go into region two mutual aid. And we've reached deep into region two mutual aid. They're providing about 40 law enforcement officers every 12 hours in addition to the 35 or 40 deputy sheriffs and local police that we have. And we are closely monitoring what's going on in the evacuation zone. We have a lot of staff up there who are stopping cars and making sure that people aren't praying on the victims of this fire. We've gone from, we've transitioned from evacuation to now we're more of a security and a property protection team that's up there to make sure that people's possessions are safe. Today we've made about 18 arrests for looting related charges or for people who are in the evacuation zone that don't belong there. We have 13 hard road closures occurring from the lower Scots Valley, Pasta Temple area all the way up to Boulder Creek and Davenport. And I really wanna commend the California Highway Patrol. They brought in not only their own local staff but they've brought in staff from other regions to help us with these road closures. There's two people per road closure, 13 road closures. So that's 26 people. A shift, 52 CHP officers a day are working on these road closures. And it's been a tremendous help and it's allowed our deputies and our police officers to be in the evacuation zone, stopping people who don't belong there and making sure that property is safe. We're today and yesterday we started working on a repopulation plan. So we're developing that plan so that when Cal Fire gives us the okay to start repopulating certain areas, we're gonna have that plan in hand and we'll implement that as soon as possible. I know that people are, they're ants, people wanna get back to their homes, I get it. But we're not gonna allow that to happen until Cal Fire tells us it's safe. I know that personally I've been evacuated. I've had 74 staff members that have been evacuated. Supervisor McPherson's been evacuated. So we're all feeling this and it's hard, it's hard on families and it's hard to be away from our homes. But the good news is, is that to date, we only have one confirmed loss of life. And as several of you have stated, one is too many. But compared to what this could have been, it could have been a lot worse. We do have seven missing person cases pending. I think we've taken 28 so far and we've cleared 21, we've located and reunified them, those folks with family. But we do have seven cases that our investigators are following up on right now. And I just wanna end with, I'm sure the board is in the same position, but all day long I get emails and phone calls with a lot of misinformation that's being passed. Yesterday, there was a rumor going around Scott's Valley that they were to repopulate immediately due to insurance reasons. And that was just bad information that was being passed around. And we can't have that. It takes a lot of resources to tamp that down. So get your information, please, to the community. Get your information from reliable sources as Chief Larkin was explaining. We're posting right now information on our Twitter and on our Facebook and Cal Fire is doing similar. So please get your information from a credible source. But I know I've been here a long time. This is the biggest event that I've seen since the 89 earthquake. And I know that Cal Fire is doing everything they can to contain this fire. Sheriff's Office, local and regional police are doing everything we can to keep the community safe. And we look forward to repopulating and getting back to some semblance of normalcy, particularly in the areas that have not been impacted. And we all know it's gonna be a long haul to get those impacted areas back up and running. That's my report. Thank you. Thank you. We have another question. Supervisor Coonerty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanna add my deep appreciation to Cal Fire, to the Sheriff's Office, to all the cooperating agencies and the county staff who has mobilized quickly to help people in need with both in an effective way, but also in a really compassionate way. I've appreciated the values that have been demonstrated by the county staff as they try to help so many of our citizens in this chaotic time where we're not only having to help people, but do it in the context of a pandemic and an economic crisis at the same time. I wanted to check with Chief Larkin about the status of getting more support here and then also patrols or efforts to put out the small flare-up fires that although we've got fire breaks, may threaten homes and what's the Cal Fire strategy to protect people's homes going forward. Our plan consists of we still have resources heavily committed to the Bonnie Dune area and those that are doing perimeter control and then we have resources that are doing point protection where they're patrolling the areas, finding hotspots and extinguishing those hotspots in and around structures to mitigate that from taking any more structures as far as destroying them. So the strategy is to continue that as we get additional resources come in. Yesterday we had a very, very small number of resources come in. We're hoping that we have outstanding orders for additional resources and just to put it in perspective, if this was a time where we didn't have so many fires in the state and we would have had all the available resources to our request, we would have probably had anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 firefighters on this fire. To date we're at just over 1,600. So we're probably half of what our normal staffing would be for a fire of this size. So that is hampering our efforts but we continue to allocate those resources to those areas with the most significant concerns and we're doing a balance of that resource level so that we can protect all the communities that are affected. Great, thank you. And we'll continue to advocate in every way we can to get you the support you need and the resources you need, understanding we're in a difficult situation statewide. Can I, another question is as the evacuation continues, you know, I think we are all getting flooded with requests for people who need to help animals that have been left behind or access medicine different, they need different things but vital business records or other things is how, what do we say to folks as they're trying to replacing generators that may have run through or refilling generators? What's the response and how do people figure out whether there's a possibility for them to get back up there? Yeah, I'm sure Sheriff Hartle have a comment on this as well but we've evacuated those areas for a reason. Those that stayed behind made a personal choice. We're gonna do what we can to try to help support that. We've been in discussions with the EOC about the possibility of getting a fuel tender up for those that are still there to help them with potentially giving them fuel to keep their generators going for the preservation of their livestock and things that they may have around the area. Those that have not taken medication or they're running low on medication, they can reach out to their local doctors and local pharmacies and get an emergency fill on their medication. So there are resources available to them for those aspects. As far as allowing people back into those areas, it's still just too dangerous to allow people to go back in for general needs such as business paperwork and things of that nature. It's just too dangerous. We have trees coming down across roadways. It's even really dangerous for our firefighters that are in there trying to do perimeter control and protect structures. Just over the last couple of days, we've had trees come down across the road. I personally was driving through the area and within five minute turnaround, coming back down the road, there was a large limb that had come down into the roadway. And I know the sheriff's department reported they had a limb come down and strike one of their patrol cars while they are out doing the protection of the community. So it's just too dangerous to allow people back into that area right now. Great, thank you. Okay, Supervisor Friend. Thank you, Chair. And a remarkable amount of thank you and praise to both Sheriff Hart and his team and Chief Larkin and your team. I mean, realistically, none of us thought that in 2020 we would face another thing that individually taken with the take every resource the county has, but on top of everything else that we've been facing, it's just unbelievable. And I believe that Supervisor McPherson asked many of the questions actually that I had, but I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that for those that are still wondering what to do and where to go next, there are still a lot of untapped resources. Not all the shelter spaces are full. Both the county led facilities, the Red Cross partner facilities, the local faith-based community facilities. There are intake people there to help you with benefits. There are people there working on SBA loans. There are a lot of options still that are currently not fully being utilized. I want to be sure that the community knows that the partners of the county, the state and the federal government as well as the nonprofit faith community have all come together to ensure that people have everything that we can provide during this time. And to echo a point that Sheriff Hart made, it seems as though much of the day is spent trying to correct misinformation that seems to find its way through social media. There are official sources. Jason Hoppin with the county has been putting outstanding information through the county sites as as Cal Fire and the team over at the Sheriff's office. Every single supervisor has been putting out information that mirrors this information. Please get your information from official sources so that we can not address some of the fears that are being stoked through the misinformation, information, but just a massive amount of praise to the leaders on this, both in the fire and police response on this, it's just been amazing what you've been able to do with limited resources. And to my colleagues on here, Supervisor Coonerty, Leopold and McPherson that are facing issues within your districts or soon anyway, potentially. I just wanted you to know that the whole board stands with anything you also need from a backup standpoint. We're here to help you as well. But thank you for your leadership and also Mr. Plosios. I can't say enough with the amount of information you've been providing us in your leadership during the emergency. But I hear from a lot of my constituents asking how they can help. They've been willing to be plugged into help. So I want the people that have been affected in this place to know that there's resources available. Thank you, Chair. You're welcome. Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Chair. Chief Larkin, thank you for your presentation and for the work of you and your team. When faced with something as catastrophic as this fire has been, the largest fire that we've seen in decades here in Santa Cruz County and recognizing that the resources aren't what we would want because of just the large number of fires, you and your team and the team that has been assembled has done incredible work. In fact, all the first responders have done amazing work. The same thing with the Sheriff Hart and our Sheriff's Office, who both of you have been steady leaders during times of crisis, which is incredibly important. It's amazing all the first responders who've come not only out of the cow fire and our local fire districts and fire agencies and volunteer fires, but that other jurisdictions have sent support both here from Santa Cruz County. I met when I was up at the base camp the other day, folks from LA, folks from other parts of the state. I know that we have folks from out of state that are helping fight this fire. And in talking with Sheriff Hart and in his presentation, he mentioned the large number of police that we are getting from other communities to help us during our time of need. And it's really a credit to the strong mutual aid system that has been built. And it's why we help out other people during their times of crisis as well. I also want to just acknowledge the county staff that have really stepped up. We've been in disaster mode since March. And the thing that before the start of this fire, we had 10 shelters with 600 people. And now we have countless number of shelters for almost 2,000 people. And that all happened within a week. It's a real credit to just the commitment that county staff have to make resources available to people during a time of crisis. And I especially want to just acknowledge the CAO's office, our CAO, Elisa Benson, Nicole Colburn, David Brown, Sven Stafford, Jason Hoppin. They've done incredible work to get these resources out to people. I also want to acknowledge Michael Beaton, the EOC staff and all the volunteers who have been helping there to help coordinate all the different aspects of this. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes in order to make that happen. It's also been incredible to just see the number of people who wanted to volunteer and to help out. And that happens at the shelters that have been stood up and all the different ways that people have opened their homes, have made resources available to people in need who have contributed to GoFundMe, who are volunteering at Emeline to accept donations. What I hear is that, you know, you have a bunch of young people who are out there really stepping up. When we hear about young people being apathetic and not being involved, what this year has shown me is that that's quite the opposite, is that we haven't engaged and involved a younger generation and that now they've also stood up and helped out their neighbors, their friends, their parents, the community as a whole. I've also been impressed by the number of people who've wanted to give money and it's great to have a partner in the community foundation of Santa Cruz County. People have contributed an extraordinary amount of money so far to help out people in time of their need. Yesterday, most of us were part of a briefing that was held in Scotts Valley at the base camp and you and your staff gave a great presentation, the sheriff gave a great presentation and we also heard from the leader of Cal OES, we had the CHP commissioner there, we had the National Guard leadership there, we had FEMA representatives just coordinating those forces to be able to be there to help out people during their time of need. It was great to see that there and the commitment that everybody had made to help make that happen. I also want to commend you, Chief and the sheriff's office and the team for the daily briefings. Most of us now wake up in time to make sure that we can get our 6 a.m. briefing. We make sure that we end the day with our 6 p.m. briefing but through Twitter, Facebook, all the different ways in which you and your staff are providing accurate information so people can understand what's really going on in this fire and don't have to depend on what they heard on next door or what they think must be happening because they smell smoke. It's really important and these are powerful tools that we now have and sometimes we complain about social media and its impact on society but in this case it's been very useful in spreading accurate information and I just want to appreciate your staff. To all the people who've responded so far in this community, we are all grateful for that and to all the people who've been impacted by this, I just want you to know that this board, the county stands with you everything we can to support our community during this time of crisis. Thank you for your work and I look forward to us voting on this resolution. Mr. Chair. I want to thank everything you guys are doing out there. It's very dangerous work and you're putting your lives on the line and we really appreciate it. God bless you for all the work you're doing. I know in South County, the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds is becoming, it is a shelter and it's got over a thousand people there. Tents all over the place and people inside the larger buildings and it's just amazing to see everything come together. Red Cross, Salvation Army, they're helping out and it's also a place where local ranchers and farmers to bring their livestock, their animals over there to the fairgrounds. There's horses everywhere and cattle and pigs, chickens, rabbits. We even have turtles out there when I was out there and it's amazing. We have no maybe idea how much livestock has been lost and what is the other measures maybe on people that, you know, I guess in a fast-moving fire like this one that really had no playbook, some people would just have to let their animals go and let them run off and try to get off on their own. Yeah, we don't have any specific numbers on the loss of livestock or animals at this point. I know as they're out doing damage inspection, they're documenting some of that. A lot of people were able to get their small animals and things out, but the livestock, most of the ranchers were well in advance of this, were able to get their animals moved to a safe location and some of them are all still trying to get their animals out of the area as we speak. We don't have any specific numbers on the loss of that type of statistic on the fire. So, I hope that answers your question. I did want to point out a couple of things that Supervisor Leopold brought up. For folks that are out there that may have needs, there's some additional resources that are available. They can go to disasterassistance.gov. That's a disasterassistance.gov to that webpage and there's resources available to you. You can also download the FEMA app or you can, from either a Google Play Store or your Apple Store, or you can call FEMA at 1-800-621-3362 and that's 1-800-621-3362 or it's just spelled out FEMA. So, those are some resources that you can get to right away or you can also reach out to the Small Business Administration for some of those business owners to try to get some assistance moving forward. The other thing I wanted to point out are damage inspection numbers. The data is being given to each of the counties and the county is going to be disseminating that information here readily. Once they've validated the information and have it in a format that the public can use as far as a searchable website or addresses for damage or destroyed structures. Mr. Chair, over here, Supervisor McPherson, there's one question I forgot to ask this morning's briefing and that's the green waste pickup. Some people are concerned about spoiled food and so forth and are they able to operate in some of the areas or what's the status of that? I'm not sure. I'll have to go back and ask that question. I know in Scotts Valley where I reside, I've been evacuated and there was a green waste truck going through on normal delivery days so it sounded like they maybe have let them through in certain areas but in the Highway 9 corridor, those areas that are directly impacted, it may just been anomaly that they got through the checkpoint but I'll go back and check and we'll make sure that gets put out in the press release. Thank you. Yeah, and quickly I want to thank the community for all the help that they're doing, people bringing down all kinds of either food or blankets or brand-new clothing and everything. The churches are all organizing in South County and they're helping out and also the Lakeview Middle School is a staging area, it's a shelter area in Watsonville High School will also be open for overflow. And then with all the good stuff for complimenting, there's always a few people that take advantage of this situation. My understanding is hotels and motels, a few of them are taking advantage of the situation by charging double or triple their normal prices. Have you seen that at all? I haven't seen it personally but I've heard of it that some people are paying well over the rate that would normally be charged sometimes in excess of three to $400 a night. So I know that is being addressed and being brought back for appropriate action. Chair, people who are experiencing that should contact the district attorney's office to have them investigate. Yeah, they will look into it. District Attorney Jeff Rizel said definitely they'll look into all of that and hopefully buy them or something like that. Okay, that's pretty much it. Thank you. We'll open it up to, yeah, we'll open it up to the public hearing and good to see you. Hi, Gary. Chairman Supervisors, we're calling for a grand jury investigation. I think you know why by putting more responsibility on the County Administrative Officer who has been cunning and deliberately deceitful that has been involved with the Community Foundation, Susan Tru and Margaret LaPaz who's the Vice President of Permanente. That's a huge medical organization that has a conflict of interest. She is being paid by a secret donor. This lack of transparency that you have accepted is outrageous and unacceptable. And the very fact it was good to have Mr. Hart on there and Mr. Leopold giving him praise because Mr. Hart has not taken responsibility to investigate Zach Friend who's got a couple of red Chinese communist friends just like Mr. McPherson's received tens of thousands of dollars from the red Chinese. This is the Wuhan flu, by the way, from China. And those people from the Grange, their personal beings were in jeopardy and so was their property according to those phone calls and the people that received them. And what might have happened to those properties was burning down. Now also Margaret LaPaz just happens to be belonged to another organization that is interested in land trust. Isn't that interesting? Because these fires and so forth are making it available again for the so-called land trust that go into big private organizations like your pandettas and all the rest of these people that are driving the state of California. These places will be made available to the land trust once again. And you yourselves abolish the Planning Appeals Board where people could put up structures, create fire breaks and do things for themselves so part of this responsibility lays on you once again. Again, the people that are involved in this include a pedophile network because everybody you see is involved. The material I gave you last time showed pictures of Lily Brown and Governor Brown with Jim Jones, the man that gave the Kool-Aid to those children. You find today that Governor Newsom recently appointed to the Chancellery a man by the name of Drake, both his wife and himself are members of the Wexler Foundation who financed Jeffrey Epstein. You can find Leon Panetta's right-hand man when he was Chief of Staff for Clinton was Tony Padesta. People out here know more than you're admitting to and the line Sentinel newspapers which Bill Gates got a cabal. He bought the Mercury, the Sentinel, the Herald and the San Luis Tribune and turned them over to globalists. That's why the people don't know what's going on. That man, be in charge of any emergencies. Your CAO is deceitful and evil. Don't put him in charge. Supervisor Caput. Supervisor Caput, I just wanted to remind you and remind folks that the public comment period associated with this special meeting is directly related to the briefing that you just received on the fires. We're not doing an over-related public comment or public comment on anything else within the board's jurisdiction at this point in time. That would be appropriate for the next meeting. Thank you. Anyone else? Thanks. Good morning. My name is James Ewing Whitman. This, I think, has to do with the fire which I spoke about last Tuesday. I witnessed hundreds of things that were horizontal. It was very unusual. I think it's wonderful that the community is coming together in all the ways that it is to help each other. It'd be great to see that with everyone and more personal self-reliance. So I'm going to quote a couple things because I feel I need to. The first weather modification patent was in 1909. It happened due to ships and smokes. It was very normal. During the Vietnam War they discovered that they could seed the clouds and create monsoon storms that would take out bridges much more effectively than bombs. There's a great deal of research that's out if anybody wants to do it that these storms are not natural. My understanding is that there's over 300 fires in California alone. People would take a step back and look at what's going on in history, what was going on nine months ago with all those fires. There's an incredible amount of information that those were deliberately set. So here we have a government and I'm standing before my local government and I see you guys do it the best that you can. But it seems like the citizens need to educate you on what's really going on. During this storm a week ago in the Midwest deliberately 40% of the grain silos that are storing food were destroyed during these storms. There are these storms going all over the world and somebody's got to say it, this is deliberate. So I don't know if I have any solutions and I certainly am not getting paid to be here and I don't think I'm really putting myself in a position of safety to be speaking out. Now I could be way more direct than I'm just not going to be specifically direct. So I'd really like to work on what's really being looked into and may I take some notes and stuff and one thing that I'm going to stand behind and work on and I will be as lawful as I can as a sovereign human being is during the son of the shrub presidency and that was during the early 2000s and I'm talking about the Bush Jr. presidency after these wildfires clear cutting was set forth and you look at the cascade fires and the paradise fires, that's exactly right now. Fires are natural, fires can heal. If you look in these forests and I did some driving around a week ago because I was able to and I negotiated going through the law enforcement saw a lot more dead trees than I had ever seen before and these ones they weren't actually on fire they were just dead already. So anyway I appreciate that we can all still speak here and hopefully we can be as kind to each other as possible and be in a state of love because that's all that's really important. Thank you. Welcome, thank you. Next person? Yeah. If one speaker is done if the next person can be there also in line, please come forward. Yeah. Hi, thank you for hearing me. I'm Wendy Sigmund, I'm from Boulder Creek and I want to say I appreciate the firefighters and Cal Fire and the sheriffs what they're doing to protect our property now so far. I am with, I don't even know how many thousands that are displaced here in Santa Cruz and I am asking you my government, my leaders to give us some sort of plan. We know it's going to be a very long time before we get back there. Myself and my family were staying in a motel which is not feasible because it's extremely expensive. We stood in line yesterday to get vouchers for our hotels but they're sending us or they're separating the family they're sending some to Melpitas that we got so far in San Francisco and we work here so that's not really feasible either. We appreciate the food that was there but it was snacks, it was nice but I and I appreciate it, I want you to know I do appreciate everything that everyone is doing but I look to our leaders to say do we have a plan quickly because we're not going to be able to stay the way we are for very long. We're in crisis mode I had one proposal of maybe on a county level we can talk about suspending the occupancy tax for our hotel rooms or something like that if there's a way we can negotiate lower rates for just the city's hotel rates, we're asking the visitors not to come here which I know hurts our economy but we need to fill those rooms if we have these empty rooms can we fill them with residents that need them at a decent rate I guess I'm not looking for a direct solution now but I'm hoping that you will get us some help quickly. I also in my live that I was just doing got a question of, I'm sorry we know it's going to be a long time but if we had some time frame, is it a month or is it six months so that we can make plans for this next six months or one month of, again we can't stay in a motel for that long so if we had a better time frame at least, you know a month, six months, a better picture of what that's going to look like and again thank you, thank you all firefighters, thank you sheriffs, fire we patrol the board, everyone that is working really hard to protect us and keep get us ready to rebuild thank you thank you, next hi Marilyn morning I'm in a vacuum and thanks to the fire department my life's work might be saved but I wanted to talk about something else I didn't know it was just about the fire but I would like to say this gentlemen before me mentioned in the trail now whether you believe in weather control or not it did happen in the Vietnam war they seeded the clouds in a Ho Chi Minh trail and it rained like crazy my question is simply this and perhaps it's a rhetorical question but if you can control the weather in the Vietnam why don't they seed the clouds and make rain it might it's something I've never heard anybody mention but perhaps it might work thank you Marilyn Garrett thanks to the courageous firefighters of course and the points made by the two previous speakers about weather modification and geoengineering has been done going on for a long time causes of fires that are not well publicized I'd like to list a few because this is certainly extraordinary I've quoted Barry Traller he gave a talk called the truth about 5G and Wi-Fi and there was a section there where he was talking about trees and how the immune system of the trees is damaged, weakened destroyed by the wireless microwave frequencies from 4G, 5G, etc. and in this talk he had a document from Australia where they're putting in 5G that from the telecommunications industry that said the trees need to be removed to have 5G and they need to be out of the way so there's the condition of our earth and what is weakening and destroying ecosystems is a very serious question and I have a picture here of a fire from a cell tower catching on fire so these smart meters cell tires cause fires and I'll leave it up with you and the lightning described very abnormal what James was talking about and the fact people have seen pictures of where the fire was Boulder Creek etc and it's in a grid a grid that's not normal this is the same time when hundreds of satellites are being launched into the ionosphere of setting the natural electric circuits circuit of the earth how much is the launching of satellites related it's a question I have regarding the county administrative officer personally I don't have confidence because I've seen attending these meetings a priority put on well-being of corporations and moneyed interests and not respecting the public and women and I think Rosemary who's the director of emergency services was doing a good job I heard and why isn't she included in the closed session meeting coming up that's a question thank you thanks a lot Marilyn hi there Monica McGuire from Coralitos thankfully Chief Larkin lovely to see you again thank you for your incredible work I have been very very careful with everyone I know the hundreds of people I know living up in the mountains and Mr. McPherson as well my heart goes to everyone on our fellow community members who need support and care I'm so sorry that you're going through what you are it's just really so difficult and we really are it's amazing being out at the fairgrounds volunteering and seeing people all over the county there is a feeling of great joy at the way that people are treating each other and coming together it's just awesome to see that as ever there have been though amongst many conversations we've heard several questions that really don't make much sense as Mr. James brought up James Ewing Whitman that he asked last week about the fires and brought up the lightning strikes but we didn't hear anything from any of you if this fire was going on already assuming you were being informed it doesn't we don't quite understand why there wasn't more warning a week ago when we were all together and please consider that kind of warning that there were the lightning strikes had hit ground and that there was well saw this VIIRS satellite image with a grid of tiny fires in the Boulder Creek Mountains area etc. it was very strange looking and I would love to understand what that is and what's going on but then another very official thing that's very concerning is three different people I know talked about being out on highway one and seeing as many as ten Caltrans trucks sitting by while fires, small fires were going on around them saying that they were supposed to close the highway but they were watching the fire get worse in ways that a shovel just issued to each one could have made a huge difference that while waiting to hear something official they were supposed to do for Caltrans could also help prevent the spread of this incredibly dangerous existence of fire as we know in the middle of summer so there are so many pieces that we hope that you're doing in your closed sessions that we would love to hear about from you to understand more what you can do to assist people to talk about out of the fairgrounds they had more meals, real meals that were going to the pigs because they were going bad so whatever that is I would like to just say some of those meals maybe you can coordinate better that they go to the other shelters because it was really tragic to watch I mean of course the pigs need to need to eat too but there was pork in some of them and that felt terrible so we just asking that you understand little ways that we are as usual volunteering to assist we will do all we can there's also a video of a hydration and fire protection available on Craig Lane's YouTube so if that can help anyone please let that help thank you you're welcome anyone else here if we can have you kind of line up so we don't, yeah good morning so I'm really puzzled about this fire thing because I was here a week ago and there was zero mention even made that there were fires in our county that were threatening any homes at that point and I just get out of control to this extent that it did it's unbelievable to me there were people on next door saying and I smelled and saw smoke myself I would go on next door see what's going on and the official word forget the woman who did it but she's an official person in some capacity with fire in this county said oh there's nothing to worry about there's some fires on the borders of the counties and wind is blowing it all the way down to the ocean and then we wake up the next day and it's Armageddon what happened how did we let it get so out of control we knew these fires were happening already so this really concerns me that's really all I have to say but I'm very curious as to how we let something get so out of control and we know that these woods have not burned in decades and they're just full of fuel so thank you for all the work that everyone is doing obviously I think there must have been some sort of breakdown in communication or breakdown in the way that resources were being handled but we need to do better in the future thank you okay are anybody down in the downstairs there's nobody there's nobody in the community room however we do have one web comment and this comment is from Becky Steinbrunner dear supervisors why are we also not I'm sorry why are we not also thanking or even mentioning county emergency administrator Rosemary Anderson why is she not part of the closed session group that is meeting after this proclamation is ratified please also give praise to the hundreds of equine evacuation volunteers that continue to work to help rescue livestock and pet why is law enforcement now prohibiting them from crossing fire police lines to help people where can people in the shelters get their mail many are wondering and no one at the shelter seem to know it would be very helpful to have a large screen TV at all shelters so that those people could watch new sessions like this one and others at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. right right now all shelter evacuees have our maps with no one to help interpret the information or answer questions we could use technology to help people get this important information people who have stayed behind to protect their homes in the fire areas report they are not seeing that they are seeing no cal fire units in their areas where are the cal fire units please give these people the fuel they need do not sell it to them as chief larkin reported will happen please announce any new rules and regulations that come from the closed session that the CAO can now institute including constricting all county employees as well as members of the public sincerely Becky Steinbrunner and that's the end of public comment sure anybody else here I would like to speak okay bring it back to the board for questions I would maybe in this situation if we could have supervisor McPherson and supervisor Coonerty make the motion and the second because your areas are more effective than everybody's so it's up to you okay supervisor Leopold any questions thank you Mr. Palaccio do you want to make any comments about the resolution itself okay fine okay I would move the resolution for ratifying existence of a local emergency I'll second that any other discussion or questions okay we'll bring it up for a vote I'll do roll call supervisor Leopold friend Coonerty McPherson and chair Caput passes unanimously that concludes public comment and the motion and we'll now go to closed session is there anything to report from closed session no okay thank you very much everybody for being here I hope everything is going okay where you live and all that God bless you thank you