In the aftermath of the closest fire events to the city of Rogue River in years, most of the early part of the Rogue River City Council’s discussion focused on the Fielder Mountain Fire, which sparked in the hills just west of the city on Thursday, Aug. 13.
Police Chief David Rash appeared shortly after the meeting started, and Public Works Director Michael Bollweg was described by the City Administrator as “not supposed to be here today.”
“Both had very active last weeks,” Nolan said. “Power and communications issues caused challenges for both the Police and mostly for Public Works.”
“It was pretty scary there, but (his officers) actually did a great job,” Rash said.
Council member Sherrie Moss told Rash during his report that Officer Chad Mathews performed a welfare check, no questions asked, on an acquaintance with whom she was on the phone when the phone quickly went dead.
Rash said officers were out on the city streets doing exactly as Moss described.
The citywide request, posted on Sun., Aug. 16, for the city, on behalf of Bollweg, to limit water use was related to fire and power outages. The power outages made it difficult to produce water to aid in the firefighting effort.
“It was hot. We already had high use,” Nolan said. “We immediately turned off the water in parks and used less on city property, but it was obvious we weren’t gaining ground with reservoirs.
“We wanted to make sure that, even with some power issues, we would be able to gain more water at the reservoir to support firefighting, especially if, during that event, anything were to happen in town and they needed to use hydrants to fight an urban structure fire. We wanted to make sure fire hydrants were functional.”
The request to conserve water must have been issued because water was rising in the city’s reservoir, Nolan said.
Nolan said Pacific Power’s intent in shutting down power was to “reduce the risk of additional fire related to power. That caused voice-over-internet telephones to be down, but the worst part, he said, was that 911 evacuation notices.
“When that happens, they take precedence over all other cell tower use. Essentially, they don’t just send one message. The 911 messages are constantly being sent to your phone, so if you move to a different zone, it will tell you what the evacuation notice is for that zone.
Because we have more cell towers around here carrying calls to other places than we do serving our area. Essentially, it was overwhelming the cellphone data system, so most cell phones were not functional at all, so that’s a good lesson to have a radio, if anybody still is possibly keeping a landline, then that’s a concern, that during an emergency when there’s an evacuation notice, it’s very likely that your cellphone is not going to be a reliable source of communication.”
Council member Barb Hilty said a text from Nolan to her and other council members beat notifications from Jackson Alert, possibly hindering the effort to get people moving during Level 3 “Go Now” evacuations.
Mayor Pam VanArsdale said that WatchDuty “is a great app,” but that Jackson Alerts will be more reliable.
‘If you’re not on Jackson Alerts, you’re not going to get a timely message about evacuations,” she said. “And then the other thing – and we’ve really got to get this message out – don’t believe what you read on Facebook about where to go during the evacuation. There is so much misinformation on Facebook.
“Fortunately, a lot of people couldn’t use their phones and get that information until later, but really, we’ve got to push – Make sure you get Jackson Alert because they’re the ones that are going to take over that bandwidth.”
Reach reporter Brian Mortensen at [email protected] or 541-582-1707.