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Council focuses on evacuation routes and wildfire risk as top concerns in Health & Safety update
Summary
Council and commissioners repeatedly identified evacuation routes and defensible‑space outreach as the top public concerns; members urged regional coordination and suggested modeling and outreach to change resident evacuation behavior.
During the joint study session, multiple council members said evacuation-route capacity and public preparedness must be the plan's top priority. Consultant Jeff Bradley reported results from community surveys and said the "number 1 thing, that people were concerned about was evacuation routes be adequate or not," and recommended evacuation‑route identification, capacity analysis and evacuation‑location analysis as part of the draft.
Vice Mayor Elahi and others noted Monte Sereno's limited local egress means the city must plan with neighboring Los Gatos, Saratoga and Campbell and account for seasonal beach‑traffic surges. Council members urged the city to pursue modeling or hire a traffic consultant to quantify evacuation bottlenecks rather than rely on disclosure alone. Several members also called for more public education about taking one vehicle per household in an evacuation and wider promotion of alert apps and tools.
