hen it comes to public administration, even the most dedicated official may feel the tug of sameness to everyday work. The objective is building and maintaining an infrastructure which hums along, day and night. The goal is no breakdowns, no surprises.

Last fall, the skies from Simi Valley to San Diego and San Bernardino turned black as a number of blazes—known individually as the Cedar, Otay, Paradise, and Grand Prix fires—made their way across the land. They began in late October (by human ignition) and were not extinguished until early December. The blazes consumed 376,237 acres and more than 3,326 buildings. Tragically, they claimed 17 lives. (As we went to press, a new season of wildfires in southern California had begun, with flare-ups near Lake Elsinore.)

From the first moment the flames sped toward their communities, Maxwell graduates Lewis, Mitnick, and Bobkiewicz faced challenges far more daunting than those encountered in everyday operations. And yet all had done their advance work; all were ready. Their city resources, in concert with state and federal assistance, triumphed over the massive, hungry blazes. As city administrators, they emerged from the crisis with a better sense of their work and where city resources and intra-agency teamwork needed improvement.

“The test of our abilities is when there is a disaster,” Mitnick says. “We hope never to be tested, but when we are, I hope we’re ready for it.”

or Jim Lewis ’98 (M.P.A.), assistant to the city manager for Clare­mont, the fires arrived long after regular office hours. It was 11 p.m. when he saw the wall of fire lunging down the hills toward Claremont. He had ventured to the fire line to obtain firsthand information. An earlier report had estimated flames would not reach city limits until 6 o’clock the next morning, but these wildfires were advancing much faster than the Williams-Curve fire the year before. 

“Watching this thing cross the foothills was stunning,” Lewis says. Assured of its proximity, he launched into action.

In the earliest hours of a natural disaster, the first challenge is one of deployment and interagency coordination—the most crucial aspect of the response coordinated by the city manager’s office. Among their tasks: ensuring that appropriate resources, firefighters, ambulances, and police units are being promptly dispatched; that disaster relief centers with assistance groups like the Red Cross are opened quickly; and that victims have access to short-term and long-term financial reparations.

“It’s not just the fire and police departments involved in disaster response. They’re on the front line, but there’s enormous effort behind the scenes,” Lewis says. “That’s where the heavy lifting for public officials comes into play. We must focus not just on the immediate incident, but also on disaster recovery, mitigation, and how we will respond to future events.”

In Claremont, Lewis says, deployment follows a written plan formulated by public administration experts and rehearsed periodically through mock disaster drills.  That’s crucial, considering how quickly this kind of challenge can arise. Lewis worked closely with the Department of Human Services (Parks and Recreation) to set up shelters.  The police department coordinated public safety. In all emergency response scenarios, Lewis says, three objectives take priority: saving lives, protecting property, and restoring normalcy of services to affected areas.

The fires advanced swiftly on this community of 35,000 residents, traveling  at up to 100 miles per hour. In the end, 55 Claremont area homes were destroyed, and 26 others sustained extensive damage—“far less than it should have and could have been,” Lewis concludes. “We could have lost hundreds of homes instead of 55.”

Thousand Oaks was luckier: the fires did not reach the city. But Scott Mitnick ’89 (M.P.A.), assistant city manager, and the many municipal crews remained in standby mode until the danger passed. Ultimately, the only damage was the occasional power outage, caused when city transmission lines were in the path of the fire beyond city limits.

 “The interesting thing when you have a disaster,” says Mitnick, “is that it really tests your relationships with other agencies.”

California, as a state that must battle several potential natural disasters— earthquake, fire and flood—has prepared well, Mitnick says. “We are the leaders when it comes to disaster preparedness,” he says.

California established the Incident Command System more than 30 years ago to provide for coordinated mutual aid response across California fire departments. After the disastrous Oakland Hills Fire in 1992, the State established the Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS). It has been refined constantly since then, thanks to regularly planned drills two to three times annually. SEMS improves with each natural and manmade disaster, Mitnick adds, facilitated by a series of stringent local fire rules and building codes which surpass even those of Los Angeles County.

Many Golden State cities share coordinated fire-dispatch systems. “No longer does each city have an autonomous police and fire department. Those days in California are long over,” he says.

itnick asserts that the city manager model of public administration has a distinct advantage over the mayoral arrangement. It requires all city services to work together.

“Cities can never spend enough—or too much—on disaster preparedness programs,” he says. “I can’t tell you we were ready for everything, but I can tell you we were prepared to the best of our ability.”

In other metropolitan centers, Mitnick explained, mutual aid scenarios are not a given. In New York City, for example, discrete political entities commandeer city facilities like the fire department, police department and water utility system, resulting in “turf wars” which can slow a city’s response to an emergency.

“If you see how disasters are managed in California rather than in New York City, we are less political,” he says. “I might upset some of your East Coast readers, but it’s the truth. . . . To be really effective in a disaster, you have to have good relationships” with other public facilities, he says.

Given the scope of this disaster, though, good interagency communication wasn’t always enough. In Santa Paula, a community of 30,000, firefighters were dispatched quickly and effectively. But, says City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz ’89 (M.P.A.), when the city requested back-up equipment from other departments, it was informed that all resources had been dispatched to other areas. The disaster had by then exhausted the resources of the entire region.

“Had the wind gone to the north instead of west,” he says, “we would not have had the resources to fight the fire.” Since then, the Santa Paula fire department has been asked to draw up a list of needed back-up items.

hether earthquake, flood, or fire, when a disaster is under way citizens reach for the telephone or turn to the television to learn what is happening. “If we are not effective in getting out proper information, the situation could deteriorate,” Lewis says. When more people are informed, then fewer make panicked calls to the city government, “so we are free to do our work,” Lewis says.

“We responded very quickly,” he adds, “and citizens expect that.”

The City of Claremont uses its website extensively to disseminate information, which proved effective when tracking the path of the errant wildfires. Still, Lewis has built changes into the emergency plan for an even quicker response the next time.

Unfortunately, infernos often affect power lines first, disabling these modes of communication and hampering rescue operations. Communication was an early casualty in Santa Paula, says Bobkiewicz. An offshoot of the Simi Valley fire tore into electric lines, knocking out major communications: telephones, then cell phones, and finally cable television reception.

Bobkiewicz had been watching the wildfires from his bedroom window at
4 a.m., as they first made their way across a pair of mountain ranges just seven miles from the city limits. “That fire marched down that hill,” Bobkiewicz recalled, “and in the course of three hours, it traveled 10 miles.”

“There was pandemonium,” he adds. “We had the potential of a city engulfed in flames.”

The disaster-response scenario was activated with no problem, starting with the Emergency Operations Center, based in City Hall. But citizens, cut off from TV and telephone, knew nothing about the services available. Meanwhile, the morning sky over Santa Paula had gone from brown to black.

The only means of communication was a hand-held city radio system. Once maligned as bulky and heavy, it was now responsible for transmitting crucial information between city departments about the fire’s approach. While the radios expedited communication at a difficult time, their battery power faded within hours. Bob­kiewicz has since purchased banks of battery chargers for the Emergency Operations Center.

Firemen were instructed to rush out to the airport, which seemed threatened by the advancing blazes. The flames ultimately did not singe the airfield; they were contained in a riverbed before shifting direction and sprinting toward the ocean. Another fire on the city’s north flank was contained in a canyon. “It was a relatively small fire, all things considered,” Bobkiewicz says.

Within hours, Santa Paula’s telephone service was restored. Cellphone service returned later that afternoon. However, it took eight hours for TV reception to be fixed. Bobkiewicz used the local government cable channel to disseminate information and to correct the wild stories that had run rampant during the media blackout.

In Thousand Oaks, Mitnick says that, as a result of last fall, he will learn to work more closely with local media. “We did get complaints that a lot of people did not know what was going on,” he says. “They felt they did not get enough information.” A local ad hoc Citizens Committee was formed to improve communications.

fter the fires were contained, the work of public management people moved into a new phase. They worked with relief programs to establish centers offering medical attention and shelter. And at this time, federal and state organizations arrived to facilitate the arduous task of assessing damage and reimbursing residents and businesses for the property losses they had suffered.

Caroline West ’01 (M.P.A.), an official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was flown west in the days following the wildfires, and served as the FEMA congressional liaison in the Pasadena Disaster Field Office. Over the course of three weeks, West traveled up and down the coast to brief politicians, so they could properly address citizens seeking financial relief to help them recover from the devastation. “We really taught them what we could do in terms of aid,” she says.

West also went to disaster field offices and listened to wildfire victims tell of losing their homes and most or all of their possessions. “I was not prepared for that,” she says. “People were trying to salvage some remnants of their lives.”

Explaining to state and local governments what assistance is available falls to FEMA consultants such as Steve Hagerty ’93 (M.P.A.), who runs the Evanston, Illinois-based Hagerty Consulting, Inc. Mem­bers of his firm were in California in November to help FEMA expedite claim requests.

“Local governments are often unaware of the benefits they can receive. Our job is to educate them and help prepare their grants,” he says. (While his team was in California, Hagerty himself was in New York City, completing FEMA’s response to 9/11.)

As part of the federal recovery team, Hagerty’s consultants sometimes need to deliver disappointing news to applicants. “A lot of local governments believe the federal disaster program should make them whole,” Hagerty says. “Unfortunately, due to the regulations FEMA must operate under, that’s not always the case.”

Although many FEMA regulations are set in stone, others remain open to interpretation. “It’s those that are open to interpretation that often result in the local government’s filing an appeal if they disagree with FEMA’s decision,” says Hagerty. Still, Hagerty, who has consulted to FEMA for 10 years, says, “There’s more of an emphasis today, than ever before, on getting funds out the door. While there are a few issues FEMA and the local government may disagree upon, these pale in comparison to the efforts made by all parties to recover in the wake of this disaster.”

One week after being interviewed, Jim Lewis was flying to Washington, D.C., to challenge FEMA on Claremont’s eligibility for reimbursement claims.

“While the fire has stopped burning,” Lewis says, “my work has not.”                

This article appeared in the Spring 2004 print edition of Maxwell Perspective; © 2004 Maxwell School of Syracuse University. To request a copy, e-mail dlcooke@maxwell.syr.edu.