Grand Jury Proposes Upgrading County’s Emergency Facility

The Orange County Grand Jury has issued a report critical of the Emergency Operations Center at Loma Ridge and is recommending, among other changes, that its primary access road be widened and a new alternative center be designated.

“We believe these are major problems,” Bruce Johnson, a spokesman for the 19-member grand jury, said Tuesday of the facility that would be the county’s brain center in the event of a serious emergency. Spacious enough to house as many as 150 personnel, the operations center contains complete communications capabilities, a two-week supply of food and 30,000 gallons of water.

“The whole idea,” Johnson said, “is that the county needs to be in a state of preparedness at all times. The recommendations mentioned in this report are to that end: These things need to be done and would improve preparedness.”

A spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which oversees the Loma Ridge center, said he had not yet seen the report and could not comment.

Johnson said the eight-page report, released Tuesday, stemmed from a tour by the grand jury last summer of the facility, which is near the Eastern Toll Road. “It was just an educational visit,” he said, “but we made enough observations to become interested.”

Among those observations:

* The center’s primary access, 1.3 miles long and 15 feet wide, is a “winding, narrow road with blind curves.”

* The secondary road to the facility is “almost unusable in its present condition and location” and therefore is “not satisfactory for use as a backup.”

* The county has no agreements with other agencies, such as the state or federal governments, for the use of helicopters to transport emergency personnel to the center should roads become impassable.

* An existing alternative Emergency Operations Center “does not meet the criteria for a facility of that type.”

* Orange County’s emergency plan has not been reviewed nor revised on a continuing basis since its inception in 1997.

“We need to work proactively,” Johnson said.

The report recommends that the primary access road be widened to 24 feet and its blind curves eliminated; that the center’s secondary access road be upgraded or replaced; that the county be divided into several helicopter “pickup zones” from which top county officials could be transported to the operations center in an emergency; that a new alternative emergency operations center be established as a backup to Loma Ridge; and that procedures be established to continuously review and upgrade the county’s emergency plan.

The county’s sheriff-coroner has 60 days to respond to the grand jury’s report, Johnson said. While the jury cannot force the county to act on its findings, he said, “We would desire that there be agreement and that the recommendations be implemented.”