Mill Valley officials review evacuation drill, test AI modeling and push countywide preparedness
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Summary
City and county emergency officials briefed Mill Valley council on a new evacuation modeling tool and lessons from an April evacuation drill, noting improvements in alerting and remaining gaps in traffic control, interagency radio interoperability and public opt‑in rates for AlertMarin.
Mayor Burke opened the meeting and introduced three regional public‑safety officials who briefed the council on evacuation planning and preparedness.
Mark Brown, executive officer of the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority, demonstrated Ladder's AI evacuation‑modeling tool and said quick runs produce community‑level outputs such as estimated residences and vehicles and a modeled total clearance time (his example returned about 1,492 residences, 2,463 cars and 4 hours 20 minutes to clear). Brown said the platform can incorporate local traffic fixes already tested in Mill Valley (for example, contraflow on Blythe Dalen and changes to Hamilton Drive) and can be used as both a planning and public‑education tool.
"This allows us to do what the Google study did in minutes, if not seconds," Brown said, and he emphasized the model’s role in identifying non‑resilient roadways and targeting work where traffic controllers and first responders should not be placed.
Stephen Torrance, director of Marin County Office of Emergency Management, said the county supports AlertMarin and ReadyMarin outreach and highlighted a recent U.S. Fire Administration tabletop exercise and expanded sheltering capacity. He described an equity‑focused campaign of 90‑minute preparedness sessions countywide during September and said OEM maintains a 24‑hour duty officer able to push mass notifications.
Chief Rick Navarro of the Mill Valley Police Department reviewed the city’s April evacuation drill, which tested traffic patterns, a new rope‑to‑Hamilton egress route and public alerting tools including LRAD and AlertMarin. Navarro said most residents reached Highway 101 from Miller Avenue in under 30 minutes, participation included roughly 300 volunteers, and the drill highlighted operational gaps: inconsistent deployment of delineators and evacuation trailers, some AlertMarin messages failing to reach registered residents, and radio compatibility issues when mutual‑aid partners arrived on scene.
Navarro recommended several operational fixes based on drill lessons: pre‑identified trailer parking spaces (two on Miller Avenue), moving staging trailers closer to roadway exits for faster deployment, and greater cross‑agency training to ensure radio patches and portable radios are available to out‑of‑county partners. He also encouraged continued public education: door hangers, signage and social media outreach that increased participation during the drill.
Council members pressed presenters on practical matters: whether the Ladder's AI tool masks fire roads (Brown said fire roads will be suppressed from public maps because he would "not recommend" evacuating on a fire road), whether Ladder’s subscription would be available to city agencies (Brown said members’ email domains are covered and agencies can access the system), and how to raise AlertMarin opt‑in rates (Torrance said Mill Valley’s adult opt‑in rate is about 48% and that moving to a simpler phone‑number opt‑in has reduced barriers).
The council praised the multi‑agency cooperation but emphasized that evacuation planning is continuous work. Council members asked staff to keep testing communications redundancies (high/low sirens, LRAD, AlertMarin) and to pursue ongoing drills at varied times to exercise different traffic patterns.
The city manager and staff said they will continue collaboration with MWPA, Marin OEM and Southern Marin Fire District to turn drill findings into specific operational changes for future exercises.
