 Good morning everyone. We're here at the California State Operations Center where we're looking forward to providing you a briefing about a series of storms that are going to impact broad swaths of our state in the coming days. Behind us, you're going to hear from leaders and first responders from across state government. A couple different ways to interact with us. Many of our colleagues, the media across the state are viewing this briefing today via Zoom. And so we're going to provide you an update where you're going to hear from experts on what the state is doing afterwards. We're looking forward to hearing your questions. And there's three different ways to ask questions today. We'll take questions from any reporters in the room. You may also, for those watching online, may submit a question in the chat or you may raise your hand and we'll call on you and you may ask your question live. If folks have follow-up or want to connect with any of these individual agencies, you may email media at calloes.ca.gov and we'll connect you to the responding agencies. So we're going to start today with an overview of the weather and then we're going to go into a 30,000 foot overview of what California is doing to keep folks safe. So to paint the picture of where we are today, I'd like to bring the podium Eric Shoning from the National Weather Service. Hello, everyone. A strong atmospheric river event will impact the state of California starting this evening and continuing through at least Tuesday. We're expecting significant impacts due to heavy rainfall, heavy mountain snowfall and strong gusty winds. These winds and precipitation will become widespread across the state tonight and Sunday. Areas that could be impacted include the Bay Area and Central Valley, especially on Sunday. That said, the most significant rainfall totals for this event are expected across the central and southern coastline, including the Los Angeles and San Diego metro areas. With this heavy rainfall, significant high impact flooding is likely, including the potential for flooding on many roadways, major rises or flooding on creeks, streams and rivers, mud and rockslides and debris flows. This damaging flooding will be a threat to lives and property. Please, if you come across a flooded roadway, we urge you to turn around, don't drown. In addition to the heavy rainfall, heavy snowfall will impact the mountains with significant travel impacts on many mountain passes and strong gusty winds will bring damage to many areas with tree, property and powerline damage possible. Again, the worst of this storm is expected Sunday through Tuesday with widespread flooding impacts expected across California. Please continue to pay attention to updated weather forecasts from trusted sources and listen for preparedness and action information from local officials. With that, I will hand things over to Cal OES director Nancy Ward. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. As you heard from the weather service, these next storms are going to be impactful and dangerous. And most of the damaging impacts most likely to our coastal and southern regions in the state. They pose a threat certainly to our state and they're the most dangerous natural disasters that we have killing more people from storm damages and flooding than wildfires every year. To keep California State safe, Governor Newsom has mobilized the full weight of the state government. He's activated our state operations center behind me to 24 hour operations. You will hear from my colleagues today their coordinated efforts during these storms. And but we know already that we've mobilized more than 8500 boots on the ground through Cal OES, the CHP, Cal Fire, Cal Trans, the Conservation Corps and the National Guard. More than 7 million sandbags are at the ready with water rescue teams and equipment, high water vehicles and emergency response personnel prepositioned. Sheltering supplies for almost 40,000 people stand at the ready with food, cots, blankets and water. As of today, we're also launching an expanded initiative to call almost 2 million California's that remain in harm's way in our most disaster prone areas. Modeled after a campaign, get out the vote. This effort will contact Californians at risk and will they'll receive life saving, life sustaining messages in English, Spanish, Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Mandarin. Finally, as the storm system comes through the state, we encourage you all to do what you can and do your part in keeping yourselves and your loved ones safe. Stay informed by signing up for our emergency alerts, including warnings and evacuations at CalAlerts.org. Check state and local government emergency operations information through their websites and social media from trusted individuals, even meteorologists in your local news can provide information that will be extremely important to keeping you and your family safe. During high winds, avoid going outside as there are dangerous debris falling tree limbs and down power lines. High winds may lead to power outages. Keep your batteries handy for your devices. Plan for other alternative power sources as you may need them if the power goes out. Avoid non essential travel during the peak of the storm. Don't walk, swim or drive through flooded waters. Do not go around road barriers indicating flood flooded roadways. Remember, six inches of water can down an adult in that water. 12 inches of water can sweep away your vehicle and two feet of water can move an SUV or a truck. And lastly, if your local agencies ask you to evacuate, please heed their messaging. And now I'd like to welcome Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources. Thank you, Director Ward. Good afternoon. My name is Karla Nemeth. I am the director of the California Department of Water Resources. The department provides forecasting high water notifications, technical assistance and flood fighting supplies throughout the state. The department also manages our bigger reservoir levy and flood systems in the Central Valley and Sacramento Valley. We have activated our flood operation center as of this morning at 7am. It will be activated for 24 hours a day as we move through this atmospheric river event. We do so in partnership with our colleagues at the federal government, at the National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and all of us together update our local flood control districts and counties around any increases in forecasting or any adjustments in forecasting and what we're seeing in terms of potential flooding in the system. With the department, we forecast river levels at 100 locations throughout the state, and we produce updated forecasts every six hours. Where we are right now is providing flood fighting materials, including almost 5 million sandbags. They have been pre-positioned at 64 locations throughout the state. The department is also providing specific support in areas of potential vulnerabilities, things like what we call muscle wall, which helps our levees that were damaged in last year's storm events. It makes sure that even levees that are undergoing rehabilitation and repair work as recently as last fall, that those levees remain secure. It's important to remember that local flood control districts do patrol levees 24 hours during the day and the night to identify potential trouble locations, and they report those to our flood operation center, and that enables us to work with our federal colleagues to deploy those resources. We do have five locations in California where we anticipate rivers to meet flood stage. That includes the Russian River in Mendocino County, the Carmel River in Monterey County, the Guadalupe River in Santa Clara County, the Ventura River in Ventura County, and the San Diego River in San Diego County. So in addition to the localized flooding that will come from heavy precipitation, we are focused on making sure that these riverine systems have the flood support that they need. We are also looking at about 16 river systems that we think will reach flood monitor stage. So again, it's these six hour updates to our forecast enable us to respond in real time to the potential for changing conditions. If you are in the Central Valley or the Sacramento Valley, you may notice that our flood systems become activated. What's different this year from last year is we do have full reservoirs, and those reservoirs have already started releasing flood water to make space for incoming inflows. So you will see flood bypasses start to activate. That is the system working as intended. So with that, be safe and be smart out there. Please do stay connected to your local resources to make sure that you have the support you need to manage through these series of storms, particularly Californians in Southern California. With that, I'd like to introduce Director Kim Johnson of Health and Human Services. Thank you, Director Nemeth. Kim Johnson, Director of the California Department of Social Services. And across California Health and Human Services, we are preparing for these storms. Our team at the Department of Social Services has prepositioned assets to be able to quickly stand up shelters with our local and American Red Cross partners. The team at the California Department of Public Health is proactively engaging with healthcare partners in areas that are most likely to be impacted to ensure they can both maintain operations and have sufficient capacity. The California Health and Human Services has prioritized our work across 12 departments, including focuses on priority populations. Those who are homeless or unsheltered, older and medically vulnerable, those with disabilities both visible and invisible, and those residing in our congregate facilities are settings both medical and non-medical. We have engaged with our statewide partners to enlist a whole of Health and Human Services community to ensure that we are collectively preparing the most vulnerable in our communities for the weather ahead. I just want to give you a call to action in your own preparation that's not too late to prepare. Please visit www.chhs.ca.gov and download our template for personal emergency planning. This is especially important for those who have access and functional needs. If you are concerned about the well-being of your loved one residing in a long-term care setting, please contact the statewide Long-Term Care Ombuds Crisis Line that's available to you 24-7 at 1-800-231-4024. Again, I want to indicate that we all need help sometimes. If you just need someone to talk to, you're feeling alone, please visit CalHOPE at www.calhope.org or call us at 1-833-317-4673. This is a resource for counselors who will listen, non-judgmental support, and will guide you to additional resources as they're needed. Additionally, for our older adults, our elders, we have established a friendship line and also offer this for you for non-emergency emotional support calls at 1-888-670-1360. Each of us can do our part. As Director Ward said, check in on your neighbor, connect with the older person in your life, and offer support to the person who might need some additional and extra help. We are stronger together. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Anna Lee Burlew, Chief Deputy Director at CalFIRE. Thank you, Director Johnson. Good morning, everyone. Thank you to our media partners for being here this morning, as well as to our state partners. Appreciate the opportunity to talk to all of you. As Director Johnson said, my name is Anna Lee Burlew, Chief Deputy Director for CalFIRE. So over the last week, CalFIRE resources have been deployed across the state, both responding to and assisting in the preparation and recovery from last week's storms and in response to this week's coming storms. We've had swiftwater rescue teams out throughout the state. An example is in San Diego County where we had two victims that we were able to rescue with our swiftwater rescue teams from vehicles that were trapped in water, in standing water. So I bring this up as a reminder to all of us that as we are going about over the next few days through these storm conditions to ensure that we are not driving our vehicles through waterways with moving or still water that potentially could leave to trap vehicles and require responders to do rescues. In addition, we've been helping our communities, especially in the San Diego area, digging out from the storm effects of last week. We've been working to prepare for the coming storm this coming weekend. Hand crews from CalFIRE in cooperation with our partners at the California National Guard, California Conservation Corps and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations have been out throughout the state filling sandbags and helping deliver those sandbags to vulnerable community members. Over 15,000 sandbags have been filled by our CalFIRE hand crews. CalFIRE will continue to have resources available to respond throughout the coming days. Examples of those include five helicopters with hoist capability throughout the state, four-wheel drive fire engines and additional hand crews. So in conclusion, I ask you all to consider, is your life, the life of your loved ones or the life of our first responders worth driving in flooded waterways or not following evacuation guidance? And the answer is no. So as we are all moving through this next storm system, please be considerate of ensuring that we are all taking precautions to ensure that we are not putting our fellow responders as well as our community members at risk. And we are doing our part to ensure that we are keeping all Californians safe. Thank you. And I would like to introduce a major Matt Bevers from the California Military Department. Thanks, Director Berlu. I am Major General Matt Bevers, the Cal Guard. I think it's important to recognize the extraordinary capability and capacity that the Guard has at the ready to address a range of consequence management challenges that the state may incur. Those capabilities include high water vehicles, engineering capabilities that you saw employed last year at about this time, including aviation capabilities, general purpose forces, filling sandbags and other requirements as needed. These assets are strategically placed across the state to ensure that we can react quickly to whatever contingency wherever the state may need us. And with that, I'll be followed by Director Tavares of Caltrans. Sir. Thank you, General Bevers. I'm Tony Tavares. I'm the Director for the Department of Transportation. Thank you for this opportunity to address you this afternoon. At Caltrans, safety is our highest priority. Keeping people safe on our roadways is paramount for us. And if you don't need to be on the roadways during the storm event, we're asking you to please, please postpone any non-essential travel until after the storm passes. However, if you must travel, please slow down and reduce your speeds. Allow additional time to get to your destination. At Caltrans, we've activated all of our emergency operations centers from Sacramento to Eureka and all the way down to San Diego. Caltrans has also pre-positioned more than 4,000 women and men working around the clock with over 1,200 pieces of equipment to address situations like flooding, mud and rock debris slides, and snow removal. Our Caltrans crews along with the California Highway Patrol will be working around the clock, as I mentioned, to keep you safe. And if you see our Caltrans crews or California Highway Patrol officers on the side of the road working, please slow down or move over to another lane if you can do so safely. In addition, Caltrans may pre-emptively close roadways due to the weather situations. So we're asking you, never drive around any barricades or closed roadways. And if you encounter water on the roadways, never drive through that standing water or flowing water. As has been said already many times, turn around, don't drown. Again, turn around, don't drown. For the latest on road conditions in real-time, I'm asking you to please visit our Caltrans website at quickmap. That is one word, quickmap, or download our mobile application to your smartphone. Again, it's quickmap, one word, and that will provide you real-time roadway information. And in closing, once again, I just want to mention, if you do not need to be on the roadways during the storm event, please stay home, stay safe, postpone your non-essential travel until after the storm passes. And now I'd like to turn it back over to Cal OES. Thank you. So thank you again to the presenters for providing an overview of California's response. And now we're available to take questions from those of you participating on the Zoom. A couple different ways to answer questions. If you'd like to ask a question, you may go ahead now and raise your hand and we'll unmute you. And you may ask a question to those in the room. You may also submit a question via the chat. And so we'll give folks just a moment to do that. Hi, we have one question, Brian, that came in privately. How is California supporting San Diego from last storm on recovery, even as the next storm bears down? So the question for those of you watching online, which is, we had just had a storm in San Diego last week. How are we starting the recovery process for that while this storm begins? And I'll ask the director, Ward, to come up and address that. Since the storms of last week, Cal OES and a plethora of other agencies that you see here have been helping San Diego, not only with preliminary damage assessments for further assistance, but setting up their local assistance center, providing technical assistance and being in their emergency operations centers to help them get through all of the documentation, if you will, that has to happen to get further assistance. The preliminary damage assessment field folks have been out in the communities, assessing the damages not only of individual homes, but of businesses and public infrastructure. Those assessments are wrapping up this weekend. I do know that the county local assistance center has closed as of Wednesday, but the city's local assistance center opened up today and will run through February the 8th, and maybe continued after that, depending on how the storm goes as well. And currently there are two shelters set up. One congregate shelter with 108 folks, and there is a non-congregate shelter option for some individuals through the Red Cross that has seven folks in there as well. All right, we'll take questions from the chat. And again, if you want to ask a question live, you may raise your hand. Another question from the chat. Are there any roads in Los Angeles specifically that we should be worried about for flooding? We'll ask Director Tavares to take that one. Thank you for that question. All the roadways in Southern California throughout the state are a priority to Caltrans. This is a very large storm coming through. It's going to drop a large amount of precipitation in a very short amount of time, a slow moving storm, and therefore there is the possibility of localized flooding on some of our roadways. As mentioned, we have prepositioned many of our crews and equipment, additional temporary or portable pumping systems to be in those localized low-lying areas throughout the Los Angeles and Southern California region. And so we will be addressing any flooding situation as quickly as possible. But as I've mentioned, we may have to preemptively close lanes or the entire roadway if there is flooding and we will do our best to get that open as safely and as quickly as possible. Take the next question from the chat. We have another question asking about whether the Governor is going to activate the National Guard. So the question was if the Governor is the Governor going to activate the National Guard and we'll have General Beavers address how the Guard's already engaged and how that process works. Yeah, as I mentioned before, we have extraordinary capacity and capability across the state, which gives the Governor extraordinary decision space to ensure that that decision is made at the right time for the right reason and places the right assets to achieve the desired effects that the Governor is looking for in conjunction with all the folks that are on the podium today. So I would offer that we are ready and we are able and capable of deploying whatever assets are required to achieve the effects that we need. Thank you. Take the next question from the chat. One more question. Are we in touch with the federal government on any aid? So the question is whether California is in conversation or in touch with the federal government on potential aid and I'll ask Director Ward to come to the podium and address that. The answer is yes, we are and have been since last week's storms. The joint preliminary damage assessments in San Diego include FEMA and the U.S. Small Business Administration to make those damage assessments for residents and businesses and public infrastructure. In our state operation center, FEMA is here, other federal agencies are here, and I can tell you that I personally have a call each day with the FEMA Regional Administrator for Region 9 with an update, sharing information of what their teams are seeing, what we are seeing and providing them an update each day about additional assistance, technical assistance that we may need. Two similar questions in the chat about weather. Is there any storm activity, similar storm activity anticipated in the rest of the month and then also how do these storms compare to the atmospheric rivers of last year? So the questions for those of you who can't hear is whether there's additional storms behind this round of storms and kind of comparing and contrasting with the storms we had last year. Maybe I'll ask the weather service to come to the podium and perhaps Director Nemeth as well. Hi, so I have some good news on the additional storms front beyond Tuesday. We could see some additional showers across the state Wednesday through at least Saturday, but that said, after we get past Tuesday, the rainfall amounts are going to be significantly less than what we're seeing on the early week part of the storm. So we're not anticipating at this time any additional widespread flooding from any precipitation that falls mid to late week. Beyond that, even better news looks like we'll have a break in the storm activity through much of the middle of February. Our outlooks for the middle part of February show drier than usual conditions across the state of California. As far as how this compares to last year, obviously it's different setups whereas last year we had weeks if not months of these series of atmospheric rivers. We've had a couple of storms that have come in recently. We do have some wet ground that will enhance flooding potential, but it's not the longer term setup we had last year. That said, this individual storm has the potential for very significant impacts. So this storm could have just as big if not bigger impacts than any individual storm from last year. And again, for folks who want to ask a question, you may raise your hand in the chat or you may continue submitting them online or via direct message to us. Question on what should folks do to report serious flooding, mudslides, or debris flows if they encounter any? Is there a phone number or somewhere to help inform first responders? So the question on the chat was how can people inform first responders if they're seeing damage, severe mudslides, other impacts locally and how can they report those and maybe I'll ask the Director Ward to answer that. So for impacts that you're seeing in either your localized neighborhoods or around as you travel through your communities, certainly the non-emergency numbers through Caltrans, their numbers to inform officials of what you're seeing. We also know that local responders, local emergency personnel will be out and about. Caltrans district offices will also be out and about. So please let your local officials know through whatever means that you have non-emergency numbers that you can report the damages both at the local level and at the state level for any roads and highway information. And just as we go to the next question, maybe a point of personal privilege on reporting, tweeting, other sorts of things, putting them online. That is not a direct form of communication to the government. If you are in an emergency situation, we want to encourage you to dial 911, report it through official channels. While we are on these platforms, we're monitoring them the same as you. The fastest and best way to get help in a moment of crisis is to communicate that through official government channels, whether it's your 911 system, your non-emergency system, your local police fire department, even the state we're here, but please be thoughtful and want to get you the help you need in the fastest way possible and please follow official channels. Any additional questions? There was a compliment on the phone banking initiative, that's an impressive number, 2 million. Why is it important to be reaching out to storm impacted or prone areas? Yeah, so the question is about phone banking and reaching out to vulnerable populations. I'll talk about it at a high level and then maybe I'll ask Director Johnson just more broadly on how we support vulnerable Californians. We as a state have invested substantially in recent years about how do we keep the most vulnerable members of our communities safe. We know that individuals who may be older, may have disabilities, may speak English as a second language, are disproportionately impacted by disasters. There's no administration anywhere else in the country that's invested the way the Newsom administration has invested in protecting vulnerable populations. That's something that's come directly out of the campfire and something that we think about every single day of how do we keep the most at risk members of our community safe and disasters and the folks behind us in the State Operations Center are working 24 hours a day because we don't want to see any loss of life at all and that's a big part of the work we do to support all of our community and it shouldn't matter how much money you have in your bank account, what your address is, we want to support you and keep you safe during disaster and maybe I'll bring Director Johnson to the podium to talk a little bit more about that as well. Glad to and I'll just also mention the license settings across California, adult and senior care settings, child care settings, children's residential settings, skilled nursing facilities, both the Department of Social Services and the Department of Public Health have been proactively reaching out to all of those operators in the impacted area to ensure that they're aware of the weather events. All of those settings are required to have disaster planning and preparation in place so we're also ensuring that in our regular inspections and visits and that it's up to date and we have those opportunities to ensure evacuations can happen as they're needed. We certainly, again, if there's any relocation needed of those that are in those settings, again, want to indicate as I did earlier, there's the phone line if you're worried about your loved ones to check in on where those temporary relocations are. That's something we also post on our website so I want to offer that as well. And as it involves unsheltered populations, specifically, a lot of outreach is being conducted right now and has been over the course of the last week as it is regularly with the investments that have been made by the governor and legislature in this space to ensure that we are connecting with those who may be currently by rivers and other places of impacted areas, getting them connected to any potential sheltering and housing opportunities that we can. So, again, a very proactive effort on all of these fronts to inform and share information about keeping themselves safe. And we have time for about one more question that we'll take through the chat. As a reminder, you can reach us 24 hours a day if you have questions at media.caloes.ca.gov. There's news desk at all of the agencies you see behind us who are available for you if you want one-on-one interviews or updates on what's happening, so we'll take one final question. Just a take-home message, what should people do today to get ready ahead of tonight? So the question is, we've talked about this storm coming in. What should people do today to be ready in advance of the storm? And maybe I'll call Director Ward to the podium to kind of answer that. And close this up. Okay. So first and foremost, have an emergency plan. Ensure that your medications, your batteries, pet food, that you have all of those things at the ready should you need to evacuate. But if you are hunkering down and staying in, ensure that you, as was said earlier, that if you don't have to travel that you're not out and about during this storm. This is a very, very dangerous storm. So take care of yourselves, your loved ones. But as Director Kim Johnson mentioned too, please check on an elderly neighbor, those folks that you know that may be homebound, that may not have the resources or the understanding of what they need to do. Bring them into your homes if you can or check on them regularly. But be prepared for this storm. There's lots you can do even in the time that we have left as the storm starts to impact California this evening, that you can be to be ready and have your plans in place. And with that, thank you all for joining us today. And if there are other additional questions, as Brian said, there's always 24-7 contact with Cal OES. Thank you.