Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Emergency Preparedness topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Santa Cruz launches year‑round 'Ready, prep, go' campaign to boost wildfire and hazard preparedness
Summary
Council received a report from a wildfire ad hoc committee and unanimously approved staff recommendations to align mitigation efforts across departments and start a year‑round communications campaign called 'Ready, prep, go Santa Cruz' to promote preparedness and outreach to vulnerable populations.
City staff presented the ad hoc committee's work on wildfire preparedness and a companion communications strategy at the Santa Cruz City Council meeting. The committee, led in part by Councilmember O'Hara, cataloged city mitigation and preparedness efforts across departments and proposed a year‑round campaign to normalize hazard planning called "Ready, prep, go Santa Cruz."
Meredith Albert, the city's Office of Emergency Services manager, described two gaps the committee sought to close: alignment across departmental mitigation activities and clearer, community‑focused communications. She said staff built a working matrix to catalogue plans, programs and campaigns and coupled that tool to a communications strategy that includes a preparedness portal on the city's website, multilingual materials and seasonal messaging.
"We found so many adjacent products, plans, campaigns and initiatives — they were spread across departments — and that presented a challenge for coordination and how we communicate our work to the community," Albert said.
Communications lead K.D. Lee outlined campaign goals: clarify existing city efforts, empower residents through neighborhood resiliency workshops, build community partnerships (including Firewise groups and UCSC) and normalize hazard mitigation as routine civic behavior. The campaign will include digital bite‑sized content, a preparedness portal with downloadable checklists, Spanish‑language outreach events and community events such as a proposed 'Race the Flame' pilot evacuation run with UCSC.
Councilmembers raised questions about layered alert systems, sirens, and outreach to seniors and unhoused residents. Staff emphasized that no single alert system reaches everyone; they recommended a layered approach combining Cruz Aware, Nixle, NOAA Weather Radios, Wireless Emergency Alerts and community outreach. Councilmember Brunner urged additional attention to workplaces and populations not often reached by online tools.
Councilmember O'Hara moved staff's recommended motion to accept the ad hoc committee report and to pursue the communications campaign; the motion passed unanimously.
What comes next: staff will continue coordinating department actions, pilot monitoring and outreach events, and return to council with implementation milestones and metrics for the campaign.
