Matt Bettenhausen has served as secretary of California's Emergency Management Agency since its inception in 2009 when the Office of Emergency Services and the Office of Homeland Security were merged. He served as director of the California Office of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2008. We caught up with Bettenhausen recently to discuss California's mutual-aid system and preparing for devastating earthquakes, fires and floods, as well as terror events.
I think so. You’re right in terms of historical fire season, as the governor frequently refers to it, because we really don’t have a fire season anymore. It’s a yearlong possibility and reality that we’re now facing here in California. We’re doing a lot in government to beef up our mutual-aid system and the ability to respond to it, but there are changes happening here in California in the climate. We’re in the third year of a drought. We obviously have water problems that the governor is repeatedly asking the Legislature to assist him with. We have to look at how we go about looking at all hazards: where we build, what we require people to do.
There’s some controversy about when to evacuate during a fire and whether to let occupants stay and defend. Is it bad policy to allow residents to stay and defend?
Sometimes, you start evacuating people and you send them into the plume in a car that is going to be blowing the dangerous things at you . So that is why we need people to prepare at home, to be able to stay there.
You look at what Australia has done in terms of stay and defend — we look at these things and work with homeowners, and a lot of people make the investments to have their own water systems and have defensible space. People working to have defensible space and to be able to defend their homes is a good thing. But the bottom line is there should be no dispute or controversy that when the most experienced fire professionals in the world make the call that this needs to be evacuated, we need people to cooperate. We had folks in the Station Fire who thought they could stay and go into a hot tub, but got horribly burned. We put firefighters at risk who want to go in and try to save them. It’s not just the personal thing; you’re putting our first responders and firefighters at risk by not following directions.
California's mutual-aid system is a beacon for the rest of the country, but there are concerns with maintaining the current level of efficiency. Can you address those?
Part of it is that we now have a yearlong fire season, so the demand is greater. The intensity, the number of fires has changed and is not going to go back. The other thing is the tight budget situation has put pressure on our mutual-aid system. We’ve had a statewide master mutual-aid system since the 1950s. Some states still don’t have it. So we’ve built on that and we have it, but we’re risking preserving it and it falling backward.
The mutual aid is “all for one and one for all,” and locals are willing to come to their neighbor’s assistance. But to do that, there’s a cost. They have to pay to help their neighbor. But with the tight budget situation, with the number of fires that we have, this is putting increasing pressures on departments.
Another frustration for us is [Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger] came into office during the 2003 Cedar Fire in San Diego. He ordered a blue-ribbon task force to review what we need and how we can improve. One thing it recommended was an additional 150 fire engines for our agencies. He’s been unsuccessful with that. When we did computer modeling in 2008 [on a predicted, major earthquake] we found it’s going to take lives, unfortunately. But also the earthquake is going to create about 1,600 fires. The more of those fire engines we have distributed, the better our ability will be to defend neighborhoods in our urban environments.
For the average homeowner in California [increasing the investment in the mutual-aid system] would cost $4 a month. You’re adding, for that average cost of $4 a month, a mutual-aid addendum to your insurance policy. I challenge anybody to say that they wouldn’t want that mutual-aid system added to their policy. If they don’t, I can guarantee you that they’re going to say they wanted it when these incidents are at their door.
FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate says we must learn to live better with some of these natural hazards, that they become disasters because of the way we build and live in these areas. Must we, in California, change the way we coexist with these hazards?
I don’t necessarily disagree. I think it’s a bit broader than that. An earthquake is going to strike anywhere, so there’s not a lot you can do about it. We ought to think a little more carefully. Are we building in flood plains — rivers in Illinois, or levees here in California? Should we be developing in some of these at-risk areas?
We must have places to live. We should take advantage of the new technology. For example, we talked about fire-resistant materials and things to do ventilation for houses so you’re not sucking embers in. The other thing is, if we are prepared for these things, a number of incidents won’t turn into disasters and catastrophes because we’re able to deal with it in a better way. The governor has been emphatic and really aggressive about water issues. We want people to have water at home.
Think about this in terms of how you and I and our families can survive at home for quite a while without electricity. We can also survive for days ultimately without food, but we’re not going to survive very long without water. From an emergency response capability, water is one of the hardest things to transport and distribute. It’s heavy, it’s bulky — it’s hard to do, and in an earthquake, you’re going to have broken infrastructure. So this is the importance of people having that water at home, stored and ready to use.
But it’s a broader issue for the state. We have most of our population in Southern California dependent on the Sacramento River Delta for their drinking water. Our agriculture industry, our No. 1 industry in California, is dependent on the water from that delta system. The difficulty for California has been that generations have not continued to make the kind of investments in building up and protecting that water infrastructure.
The levees we have in many cases are more than 100 years old. They were not built for protecting the kind of infrastructure people are living in behind them. When you talk about the delta, if an earthquake happens and the levees let loose, what happens to the entire water infrastructure here in Northern California is that water drains out. Then it sucks the ocean water into the delta. So you’re going to, in a sense, alleviate or poison for human use all of that water in the delta that serves all of California. We have 37 million people. Those people are at risk.
What's your perspective on the relationship between emergency management and homeland security?
They’re intricately interrelated. There really is no separation between the two, ultimately. Last year, the governor was able to get legislation to bring together the offices of Homeland Security and Emergency services. Emergency managers have learned that we have to expand. This is not just a response in recovery responsibility. We have to do all hazards.
The issue is: are you building the capacity to respond and recover from it? So you have to take that all-hazards view whether you are in homeland security or emergency management. Again, it's the culture of prevention and preparedness. If we can prevent it in advance, an ounce of medicine is worth that pound of cure.
Eight years after 9/11, are we still vigilant enough in terms of homeland security?
I think that is always a challenge. There are pluses and minuses to it. It’s one of the things that makes America great. We’re a resilient nation. We can get knocked down, we can get hit, but you know what? We’re going to dust ourselves off and move on. That kind of resiliency is important. But with that resiliency can come the problem of complacency.
You have people who are getting older who were [very young when] 9/11 [happened] and don’t understand this culture of prevention and preparedness. The risks are very real. When we look at terrorism prevention, everybody has their role to play. See something, say something.
