[0:02] This is the Wednesday May 15th Board of Commissioners meeting. We are coming to you from the evacuation assembly points in the South Beach, Newport Oregon at the airport.

[0:17] And if you're listening to this recording,

[0:21] I've been having some technical difficulties activating

[0:24] the wireless internet,

[0:27] but that's what we're here for as the test this technology.

[0:31] We are in the field,

[0:33] so when you think about continuity of operations for the Board of Commissioners,

[0:37] this is what it's all about,

[0:38] it's about going in the field,

[0:40] testing the technology and finding out where our gaps are.

[0:43] So, with that being said, I will call this meeting order.

[0:48] First thing we want to do is establish a core on,

[0:51] and to my right is Commissioner Halls,

[0:54] my left is Commissioner's Jacobson.

[0:56] That makes a core on with us today too.

[0:58] County Council, Kristen Ull,

[1:00] Administrator Timothy Johnson.

[1:02] We have kind of flip our public information officer

[1:05] and Kathleen Kelly with us today.

[1:07] We are in a tent.

[1:08] Now, you can't see this because there's no video.

[1:11] And with us are a number of guests,

[1:13] which we will get to soon.

[1:15] No recognitions or proclamations, that brings us to the adoption of a consent calendar

[1:22] to my fellow commissioners, or anything they want to highlight, or forth.

[1:26] Nothing to highlight or pull on make a motion that we adopt the consent calendar as a

[1:30] Offset for that motion, okay?

[1:32] All in favor.

[1:34] All right.

[1:36] And we're moving down through the agenda, no public hearing, no decision in action today.

[1:42] We have kept it pretty light due to the proceedings today.

[1:48] And that brings us to discussion and information.

[1:51] And we have a special guest today.

[1:53] This is Director Fairbord of Oregon Department

[1:57] of Health and Human Services.

[1:59] And I think we'll get a lot of context

[2:02] about what we are doing today at this evacuation assembly point.

[2:06] So welcome.

[2:07] Thank you for coming.

[2:09] Thank you so much, Commissioner Miller,

[2:13] Air Force Factor, Director of the Oregon Department of Service.

[2:16] It's really an honor to be in your presence,

[2:19] and we part of this gathering.

[2:22] What I wanted to do is just one for quickly

[2:25] through some of the facts about the agency and some of the things

[2:28] that we have been doing as the agency,

[2:31] and especially our office at resilience and emergency management,

[2:35] which is responsible for both responses.

[2:38] have been covered within the Oregon Emergency Management Plan.

[2:45] So that we start with what we have in our agency,

[2:50] which we call our networking office guard.

[2:52] We consider four pillars to it.

[2:54] But maybe the punch line on this equity

[2:57] office guard is that last color, which

[2:59] doesn't stand in communities.

[3:02] We'll know services and supports are working

[3:04] when all we live in, or, again, regardless of identity,

[3:07] or place can achieve what we want to be talking about equity.

[3:11] We are also talking about equity in rural communities.

[3:16] The difference between urban and rural communities

[3:19] and the resources of the lack in rural communities, etc.

[3:23] As it relates to our own agency in CNS,

[3:26] we have and I apologize that our folks cannot see it,

[3:30] but they're hearing it, so I'll try to explain it.

[3:33] We really have three priorities in our agency.

[3:35] One is just doing the day-to-day work at the agency.

[3:40] We have research, one in three organics through services and supports that we provide

[3:45] for six different areas within the agency.

[3:49] We do all of the eligibility for organ health plan, for me, and basically a child care that is

[3:56] related to employment, employment to the day-to-day care.

[3:59] We have four TANF or SNAP for aging and people with disabilities.

[4:05] We provide those services, a vocation rehabilitation, seniors and people with disabilities.

[4:13] And last but not least, you hear that quite often in the media chat while they're.

[4:18] Those are services to the Department of Human Services and it's most important that we do that work well.

[4:23] So that that's first pillar strengthening our foundation.

[4:27] The second piece is responding to emergencies and disasters, and this really became really visible to us.

[4:36] And I'll talk about that after the 2021 fight, because that was a historic event that brought us

[4:43] to the consciousness that we need to be a whole lot better prepared for responding emergencies and disasters.

[4:50] And finally, creating the future of human services, the world is moving.

[4:54] Partificial intelligence, generative AI, these are changing the world that we live in and

[5:00] on thus the participate actively in the creation of that future we're going to be left behind.

[5:07] As it relates, especially to our role as an agency in Oregon, the emergency operations plan,

[5:14] we can see that we have both a response and a recovery function.

[5:18] The response function is really providing shelter for water distribution of the emergency supplies and providing information.

[5:27] As it relates to recovery, it's really accessing community social services needs following a disaster helping people that perhaps English is not the first language, like myself,

[5:41] the first generation immigrant, English is my second language, a lot of people may not speak

[5:47] the language well and still need help during emergency disasters and then coordination and navigating

[5:57] barriers of people face during the recovery. If you see organ department actually organ health authority

[6:06] It has an area map based on which they provide health services.

[6:12] We use the same map, there are nine different areas within the state.

[6:15] You can see, as far as Lincoln County is region two.

[6:21] And then this is a snapshot of the 2020 part of Oregon wildfire response.

[6:27] There were 5,000 to that 5,000 families.

[6:30] that were relocated, many of them went back to their structures because they were not

[6:38] impacted, but ultimately, each after more than 4,300 survivors.

[6:43] And these are data from 2022.

[6:46] We had over 1400 cases that we were still managing these Azure case managers, I spoke about

[6:53] this earlier.

[6:55] When you leave your home in a hurry and you're not even taking the basic identification

[7:00] Other things that you have with you need to be connected to services and that's part of the work that we do to our disaster case managers

[7:07] During that time, we served more than 2.1 million meals to people who were sheltered

[7:15] we had about

[7:17] over 800 survivors that transitioned to permanent shelters, permanent housing

[7:24] very interesting

[7:25] in the early 2020 wildfires, and you remember that that was also the beginning of COVID

[7:32] and pandemic. Again, organization in Portland called Fortified purchased a lot of hotels

[7:40] that either were selling or went out of business and the transition and basically converted

[7:48] those to many apartments, especially in southern Oregon. There is a huge issue with housing,

[7:56] So we basically had contracts with 79 hotels, because we were doing a pandemic because

[8:06] not put people in structures like me, they had to go into individual rooms.

[8:11] So those hotels helped shelter those 4,300 survivors, and then wraparound services and

[8:18] community-based organizations, I said this earlier, we are a very small organization when it

[8:24] to response that recovery is really the communities that do the work.

[8:28] I mean, he based organizations, we rely on open communities to help us do this work,

[8:33] and that's how we actually manage to do that.

[8:36] As we talk about building an organ that's prepared to respond to emergencies and disasters,

[8:44] first of all, we collectively kind of talking about our agency and all of you

[8:48] need enough staff and volunteers to be able to do this work.

[8:53] The structure that you see here today with 17 tents and administrative

[8:58] tent and medical tent, six showers, et cetera, was set up in less than four

[9:04] hours.

[9:05] And how we did that is with all of your company from the community, there's no

[9:09] way that we can do that.

[9:11] In fact, in total, we took us at four hours and the reason that we did that

[9:16] Under that time here is that we have more help from the local community.

[9:21] The coordination with the local community, the exercise, like these, so that we can get prepared.

[9:29] I don't find the gaps that exist in planning and implementation.

[9:33] That's really for the value of doing this thing.

[9:36] And then building communities capacity so that local response can be as effective as it can be.

[9:43] Again, we're basically a support function, you do all of the work and we really appreciate that.

[9:52] There's also this hospital 34 online that passed during the 2023 legislative session that provides what they call resilience,

[10:02] of grant about the $10 million grant so that we can support the needs of the local community

[10:09] community member tribal communities and so that we can create places like these that can be

[10:17] gathering places in response time when and if disasters happen and again it's around creating

[10:26] enough foundation for communities to have the resources to be able to

[10:32] on clean processes and disasters. As it relates to this particular exercise, you can see I just

[10:39] book briefly, spoke about the 17 main tents, one up tent, that's the command tent, six

[10:45] showers. We have pots, we have blankets, we have pillows, we have food, towels, toilet

[10:51] rebags, we have generators here, portable water, internet action that's supposed to be working.

[10:59] And it is not for the moment, and then this is actually the third of these things that we've done with it.

[11:08] One in the Salem airport two years ago, last year with the one in Talmud.

[11:13] And we actually had hoped to do this last fall, but now we do the spring.

[11:19] And we plan to do another one of these in Southpost in collaboration with the tribes, hopefully in fall.

[11:30] This is a picture of actually if it was taken here, you can see some of your own local community members, fire chief, etc.

[11:39] that are basically preparing to set up the infrastructure here that basically a two-day event that is started with a lot of preparation.

[11:52] really beginning several months ago where we did workshops, classes, again, preparation for this

[12:00] exercise. And then the deployment is yesterday and today, day one was full start-out on

[12:07] preparation, day two, today is actually just going to the exercise we're going to have aerial

[12:22] that is basically what the PAN is working with.

[12:25] So we will come to an emergency evacuation point.

[12:29] Really, anyone, yeah, I spoke about this earlier at the media event.

[12:35] Imagine if you are at work, you know, your partner, your spouse, maybe at work.

[12:41] Your children may be in a school, and order comes to evacuate.

[12:46] There's not enough time to assemble with your family, so everyone needs to head.

[12:50] toward the evacuation assembly point.

[12:54] The function of this infrastructure that's been set up here is first of all to register everyone,

[13:00] so that we have a good accounting that we have in this infrastructure.

[13:06] Hopefully, we unite people so that you can reunite with your family members.

[13:11] Hopefully, your pets, et cetera.

[13:12] If you have family members in the family that you can basically use them as your next

[13:19] sheltering environment, that's what can happen if not you have to be sheltered in hotels, etc.

[13:26] This is an evacuation point.

[13:29] So we can basically process hundreds and thousands of people, even though the capacity is around 90

[13:36] because we can process and get to the point.

[13:40] Again, their showers, if people are wet, cold, their hungry, and those facilities, those infrastructures here, take care of them,

[13:50] because I'm traumatized.

[13:53] They may have been separated from their loved ones, etc.

[13:57] That is the value of something like this.

[14:01] Finally, what I wanted to share with you is last year, at the end of July,

[14:06] I was in Middleberg, Virginia, with about half dozen of my colleagues across the

[14:12] country, Health and Human Services directors, and one of those people was

[14:18] happy to have the director of Hawaii Human Services, and even though that gathering

[14:23] was around economic mobility, one of the things that we talked about was the importance

[14:29] of having emergency functions within Human Services.

[14:33] And again, as it relates to us, it was a wake-up call for us when the 2021 crack-up, none of us were ready to respond to that.

[14:42] Within weeks, we stood up this organization, office of resilience and emergency management, and we started with nearly 50 people to be able to respond.

[14:52] Everyone in that gathering talked about the importance of doing that and unfortunately two weeks after

[15:00] We have a high-up high-up low-up, which is devastating for people in Hawaii and in China, Maui.

[15:13] But what happened as a result of us being prepared immediately, the day after we started mobilizing for shower units,

[15:21] We have 17 of our forum staff supporting either onsite or Y with connecting to federal emergency management agency.

[15:33] The governor of Hawaii committed to create and organizations like we're in Hawaii and they're now in the process of doing that in Turkey.

[15:45] And I just want to reiterate that all of this stuff that you see here past money, but from my perspective, it's not an expense, it's actually an investment.

[16:02] But this is, like, an insurance policy that we would never want to lock down.

[16:07] You know, when we buy house insurance, our insurance, we would never want an accident to happen,

[16:12] like we need to have that.

[16:13] And this is an insurance, so that we're ready when an emergency like this occurs.

[16:19] And again, I'm honored to be your presence and be able to be a partner with you.

[16:26] And in doing this, if you have any questions, I think more than that.

[16:30] Director Fairbores I do, we think about kind of a launching if you will, the emergency support functions.

[16:38] As a fair to say, it just takes time to iterate and implement those.

[16:44] And how long has it really been? When did the emergency support functions really take root as being a priority implement?

[16:54] Thank you, Commissioner Miller. You know, prior to 2020.

[17:00] the emergency, and as always, but basically we were doing cable cop exercises. It's never

[17:10] actually doing something like this. We never had any of this infrastructure, so I would say as far as

[17:17] the reality of what you see here, if began in 2020. In August, September of 2020, the September

[17:26] wildfires that happen today were gay fires. And what you see here also I have to say that during

[17:34] COVID, you may remember there's a lot of federal money that drove them to Oregon. And a lot

[17:40] of this infrastructure was made possible to build federal funds. To FEMA, to our best response,

[17:49] I'm sorry, I'm going to go to ArcoFontz in September, so all of those helped us with this infrastructure.

[17:56] And those of you who heard Representative Evans earlier today, he wants to have a hundred of these across Oregon, so that every community will be ready to respond in a way that saves lives.

[18:14] I've been here for 24 hours now, so I am learning a lot, but what about you?

[18:20] Any of you have questions for the book?

[18:22] At this point, appreciate the presentation.

[18:25] Appreciate the partnership, of course.

[18:27] Thank you so much.

[18:27] Yeah, I'd just say comment on one question I guess.

[18:30] I'm going to be two comments.

[18:33] The HVP for our nine, you know, just say

[18:36] and the county has a grant application and for that as well.

[18:39] And we supported several others that were grateful that that money flow that I'm just going to turn out my free projects there

[18:47] The second thing I was going to say which I can follow up with you on one other time as I I feel like

[18:54] On the recovery piece

[18:56] You know, just just like today what we're practicing kind of at response piece right like over the internet and what I'm willing to do next time to make the internet

[19:04] we didn't have the tool we needed to put the tents up and we needed that tool.

[19:09] I feel like we haven't been very good as a state in my opinion.

[19:13] To think about the recovery part that we did from 2020 to do that same exercise, right?

[19:20] Like, what do we get right? What do we get wrong?

[19:22] I don't feel like we've done a very good job.

[19:25] There's a lot of us, myself included, are still in that recovery piece.

[19:29] So it's your agency.

[19:30] So, I feel like we haven't done a great job of really doing the debrief on that recovery piece.

[19:36] And what worries me about this, if we don't do the debrief, we just do the same thing all over again.

[19:41] Right, we just make the same mistakes.

[19:43] So, I feel like the UNI can have a conversation about that later.

[19:47] I feel like that's a piece that I see really needs to happen on the recovery end.

[19:51] Is that deep debrief on what happened in the recovery part in 2021?

[19:56] I think none of us will repair it for that in every cover piece, but again, if you don't talk about what, well, and didn't go well, what do you do differently?

[20:06] Or what else have changed those things out?

[20:08] This is a conversation.

[20:10] Conversation.

[20:11] Thank you, Chair.

[20:13] Hey, Kipsen.

[20:14] I would say that your wife is on.

[20:17] If we were not so prepared for the response, we would even mess with your wife.

[20:24] Because, I mean, if it's in the D4 2020, it has no major disaster at all.

[20:31] With such an amount of same talents, which was many years ago, I'm just here with that thing.

[20:37] Both COVID and the wildfires brought in these sense of consciousness about what it takes,

[20:44] so I can use the learning.

[20:46] And the other challenge, especially during COVID, was worthy of face people.

[20:51] And then if you actually had been to Southern Oregon, it really was a disaster that people lost most

[21:00] where lower income or low needs.

[21:04] That, I mean, if you go to the Phoenix area community in Jackson County, you see what basically burned

[21:14] where it was this strip of mobile phones.

[21:17] I don't need to go to Phoenix there.

[21:19] Yeah, you can see here.

[21:20] I've seen it here, yeah.

[21:22] Yeah, and also in Mary and County, I think housing

[21:26] was a big piece, a big problem that we had

[21:28] with having a housing.

[21:31] How do you actually transition people to permanent structure?

[21:35] I do take care of them.

[21:36] So I think we were still learning a real right time.

[21:38] There was a lot of learning that we still occurred.

[21:41] And as Representative Evans was mentioning,

[21:44] There's also that precious nest to invest into both response and the lead.

[21:50] So I look forward to the conversation that you have.

[21:55] And also learning more about your needs.

[21:57] Yeah. And thank you for that blog, Brad, your application.

[21:59] Yeah, absolutely.

[22:01] I can't wait to get the opportunity.

[22:03] All right.

[22:04] Well, thank you very much.

[22:06] Appreciate your time.

[22:07] Jeff, anything to add?

[22:09] You know, you are very blessed.

[22:12] as a county because you have amazing leaders, right?

[22:15] You have many of them in the room.

[22:17] You have a share of this brilliant, has great philosophy.

[22:21] Hires great people, quite frankly.

[22:24] And we get tremendous support.

[22:26] And I say that not significantly because you're in the room, sir.

[22:28] I say that, well, hard to believe behind your back.

[22:31] I'm sorry, Tony.

[22:32] A lot? No.

[22:36] But I think that's indicative of the leadership of the county.

[22:41] And you're all willingness, all three of you,

[22:44] a willingness to participate, not just in this event,

[22:48] but in others, right?

[22:49] And to talk about recovery in a very realistic way,

[22:52] and how we can move forward.

[22:54] That's not happening everywhere,

[22:56] and I think that's another great reason why

[22:59] Fairbores wanted us to invest resources here in Lincoln,

[23:03] because we know we have a great partner,

[23:06] and we can begin to show others what to do

[23:09] how to lead with that because we talk about all the equipment that's fantastic but it's the

[23:15] people that really make the difference and so our partnership between the state and the county

[23:20] and even the city here in Newport has been remarkable and you should be very proud of that I certainly

[23:25] proud of the connections that we've had so thank you all thank you very much thank you very much thank you

[23:31] okay thank you so much and we will continue to exercise throughout today and there's many media

[23:37] partners here, so I'm certain people are going to see a lot of footage of what we're doing here today.

[23:44] Okay, we have nothing else for discussion and we are coming to reports.

[23:50] I ask a few things I want to bring out.

[23:53] Do you like Mr. Jacobson?

[23:55] I do not like this guy.

[23:57] No?

[23:57] Okay, one of the things I do want to bring up, we do have our share of today, and I think that was a good segue.

[24:03] You know, Sheriff requested an agenda request and I want everyone to understand that I didn't feel like I was ready to have as somebody who is a gatekeeper if you will on or agenda to have a discussion about the Sheriff's request for South County law enforcement.

[24:22] I think it's appropriate to ask my cohorts that I think we need to bring this chairpan to a common meeting to discuss that and get your perspectives on one of make sure that that is something that would be so comfortable.

[24:37] There is so some information.

[24:41] I'm waiting for the county administrator down to what the company is working on.

[24:45] So I think once I have those pieces I would say that's still waiting for some of that.

[24:50] Okay. Okay. And I feel the same once we have the information in hand at favor getting this done

[24:58] in it at the earliest possible agenda. Okay. Sure. We want you to come before us and we're getting

[25:04] okay. So thank you for your patience and you know I just want you to understand we do want

[25:11] to have a productive discussion with you. So don't feel like that doesn't happen.

[25:18] And also

[25:20] So with Sheriff here, Samantha Buckley, as Susan Trassel done, an excellent job coordinating

[25:28] and working with the Department of Human Services for this evacuation assembly point.

[25:35] And remember, this is just the first generation of many things to come.

[25:38] It's a great asset for the community.

[25:41] And it's a good first start and something for us all to consider that there's more to come

[25:45] in order to build upon.

[25:48] So no other reports?

[25:49] Okay, all right, we will move into when is our next

[25:57] For meaning for your own I forgot not just what it's gonna be I'll give you a little

[26:03] I was waiting for this thing here

[26:06] Okay, so anybody here in the room that would like to address the commissioner

[26:11] So you have three minutes and this will create a do so

[26:16] No one at this point?

[26:18] We don't have internet access right now.

[26:20] So we have no universal constituent in, but any riddle in the constituent in the

[26:26] place.

[26:26] We have not received any riddle in the place that's the last meeting.

[26:29] Okay.

[26:30] So this is, you know, as a, if you will, to ear down the tab for those that are listening

[26:36] online, remember, we were unable to pull up internet access today, ideally we would

[26:42] I'd like to participate in virtually through the day and the Civic Clerk software and just have technical difficulties today.

[26:51] This audio will be published online with the agenda.

[26:56] And hopefully we are sure to publish the packet information that includes Director Farboss's presentation.

[27:02] So, we've gotten through reports and public inputs and our next meeting will be Monday, May 20th, followed by Wednesday, May 22nd, will be returning to our chambers as the Lincoln County courthouse and thank you for listening.

[27:23] And with that, we are adjourned. Thank you.

Board of Commissioners Meeting

Transcript