On Monday, April 20, Carson City Emergency Management and Douglas County Emergency Management co-hosted a full-scale evacuation exercise for residents of Old Clear Creek and the Clear Creek Tahoe area.
The scenario was a wildfire that started near the crest of US Highway 50, forcing residents to evacuate to a Temporary Evacuation Point (TEP). This process took months to plan and included door-to-door canvassing of residents to provide information on the exercise, emergency alerts, wildfires and Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT).
The two jurisdictions had law enforcement, Search and Rescue (SAR), and CERT supporting the evacuations. Carson City Parks, Recreation, and Open Space, Health and Human Services, CERT, and the American Red Cross had members at the TEP checking in the evacuees to register them for services.
The Carson City Emergency Operations Center was activated as a Multi-Agency Coordination Group with support from NV Energy and the National Weather Service. The regional fire departments and districts were also training in the area for wildfire season in a collaborative and coordinated operation. These functions allow our communities to be better prepared to evacuate a neighborhood, receive people in TEPs or shelters, and support responders during disasters.
The Emergency Alert Systems from both counties were also used to understand our cross-county coverage and to practice delivering the “Be Ready, Get Set, Go Now” messaging to help our residents evacuate safely. This messaging is also displayed on large highway billboards across the region (Carson, Douglas, Lyon, and Storey Counties), funded in collaboration with the Carson City Health and Human Services Public Health Preparedness Program.
All phases of this exercise yielded significant successes and lessons learned to better prepare our regional partners, our residents, and our responders for when we need to implement these plans.
