you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Okay, it's 6.05 p.m. the 16th of January our EPC meeting called the order, roll call. Juan Lee is here. Justine and I see us here. Albert Viegum is here. An absent today is Bradley Romsted and Patricia Kelly. So we'll continue to start with the flag salute. Mr. Amy. Okay, we'll move right into the public comments. The first speaker, Mr. Dominguez. address and then your name. Yes, good evening. I just have a couple of updates. The first one is that we're still working on the local neighborhood groups. We have, I have one more potential group hopefully coming up in the east section of Lahab Heights as far as getting their little neighbourhood to the other in case when I'm emergency. But it's been slow. I don't know of any other developments in that. It's difficult to really get people to come forward, come together, and actually announce it to us. I do hear from conversations where people are doing that, but they're just not making it official. They're not letting anybody know. They're just conversation. They're having among themselves. So yeah, at least one more group that I'll be hopefully assisting through the EPC to come together and organize among themselves. The other thing I wanted to clarify, Tuesday we had the meeting with Kathy Sobel from Firewatch as far as what her experience has been throughout the years. She's very experienced with many aspects of being a volunteer and helping out in emergency situations. She's very knowledgeable. One of the subjects that came up was the apps that people are using during these emergencies have come up lately, major fires. So the one that I have been working on myself and defining the zones for the City of La Haber Heights is the genesis app Putting in our zones, which is five zones which is the the basic information layer that watch duty uses in their Bit of information that they put out it starts with them having the information that Genesis has, which is to have the zones that different cities have already defined. La Haberites is like an island right now. There's no other zones around us that have been defined. But more are coming on. The sections where the fire happened, most of them did have their zones defined. So through Genesis, so they took that information, watch duty took that information and used it to start pushing out information. The advantage with watch duty is that it's got much more features other than just having the zones defined. Once you go into watch duty, it's got the additional features of you automatically get a tone, notifying you what's happening as opposed to Genesis. If you think something's going on, you got to first know somehow, maybe by watching the news or something that something's going on, then you can go to your Genesis app and find out what's going on in your specific zone. Watch duty just gives you a beep and that tells you, hey, something's going on in whatever location, then you can go and find, something's going on in whatever location, then you can go and find out what's going on, including not only the zones, you can find out what helicopters and air supplies, air equipment is nearby. The wind direction, which is very important once the fire starts in our situation, for example, if we have a fire, anything north of us, and the wind is fine, is flowing southbound, that's a problem for us. It's coming our way. So that's going to stuff that shows up on watch duty, including details of what's being closed, where the road closures are at, what's happening in the near future, whenever there's a new news update on TV or because of the city getting to get officials from the city getting together, all that stuff isn't watch duty. So it's got much more details, including cameras that are nearby the fire. So you can actually activate those cameras. Some of those features like the camera, I've included it in Genesis section of our zones. But overall watch duty is the app to get. So that's the difference. Watch duties, it's got many more features in Genesis. But Genesis is the bottom line of the basic information that's being used on watch duty. So that's really all I have for right now. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? Okay. Then thank you. Now we have second Mr. Renelson. Good evening. So, Mr. Lee, we kind of met the other day at the meeting. Yes. And I have a lot of questions on the fire. Situations up on the top of the ridge up here. I live at 2272 Papaya Drive and Powder Canyon Ridge is directly above me. Built the house in 72. So I've been there a long time. They used to plow and run cattle on the top of that thing. And they don't anymore. They tried to plant plants there, I don't know, maybe six years ago, put all this water line in for what. And then I was asking you, who's in control of Powder Canyon? Because where they used to have hardly any vegetation and the cattle would run, they'd even cultivated at times. Now there's six foot of just garbage. And the only place that's clear is about a 200 radius area around the towers. They actually fix it so their houses wouldn't burn, but if there's a problem it's just going to light that whole top, come right down and burn my house. So I wanted to know whose responsibility is it for Powder Canyon? Maybe the city manager knows a little bit about the maintenance of the Powder Canyon. Yes, so Powder Canyon is actually owned and controlled by the Maybe the city manager knows a little bit about the maintenance of the powder canyon. Yes, so powder canyon is actually owned and controlled by the Puente Hills Habitat Authority. So their Habitat Preservation Group, they are a quasi-governmental agency, like a nonprofit that is a landowner through this region here, not just us, but in the county area in Lover Heights, also in Whittier Homes, Lands, for the preservation of native vegetation and wildlife. And they are the ones that actually own and maintain it. We work with them to do some fire clearances on areas around houses and the hot rides along the roadways where we have roads that have put out of Canyon along sections of Skyline and Florida Road and those things to do some fire clear to run there based off some agreements that were done back in the 90s when that property was purchased and over taken over by that organization. It is something that we do have some concerns about as well and there will definitely be a few larger conversations coming up in the near future. If you get the heights life here, I was just on the phone with the mayor and he's gonna be looking to try to put together an organization or a town hall meeting to kind of talk about some of the fire clearance and concerns in the community and along with Powder Canyon as well. We used to have the fire people come by every year, like I said, we've been here a long time. And every year they come by, probably one main guy and maybe four young kids. Yeah. And they would walk the area around us. We've got three open lots around us that just they don't do much with their weeds at all and I haven't seen hardly anybody here lately. So I'm just curious what changed. That I'm not sure about over the years know, we've had different foreign marshals that have come through and looked at it We just fire trucks would come a big fire truck with a cupcake made park Because they got used to had a big German shepherd. They got used to having my dog come out and bark and my daughter come up and Conquer all the dog. I mean, yeah. It was the same people for quite a while, or people that knew us. Yeah. So what's happened? I mean, lately, nothing. It used to be done by the actual firefighters crew. We had a fire marshal who would come in and oversee it and our actual firefighters or volunteers and the captains would go out and do. They would do the inspections and look at it. That's when you would probably see the engine out there looking at it. We sort of moved away from that several years back. The city moved to a different structure of a program with the fire marshal and inspectors that were more of a seasonal. We begin that annual inspection in May, May 1st is the time when we begin those programs and that inspections for it. So usually you will see them out there quite a bit right at that time period. So it will be that fire marshal and some of them have had some seasonal fire inspectors that go out and look at it. Last year our fire marshal worked with the firefighters again to try to get them back involved in it to get back out and doing some of those inspections with them But we've just recently changed fire marshals We have a new one and they're gearing up for the program right now currently right now We have our fire marshal that we do have we have brought on a full-time At part co-enforcement part brush clearance inspector that are out that we now have full-time year-round That we'll be able to continuously do inspections and get out to all the properties and parcels. Okay, so my recommendation is that when they're out and about they ought to go up to top of Powder Canyon, see what it looks like. Even though you said that, well there was a guy that was named in the City Council meeting on Tuesday that had something to do with powder canyon And I don't know it was like 21 Here's I think a solution that we can and if you can identify those properties that are within la Habra Heights Near you where there is brush issues. If you, as a neighbor, you can kind of send in the information, maybe the fire marshal could take a visit and address that issue for you. But if I want to do something or find out something about powder canyon, I've got to go to. Oh, so it's 20 hills habitat preservation. We can get you information for, hang around for the meeting. We'll get you some contact, hang around for the meeting. We'll get you some contact information for that organization as well. Okay. We'll try to get some information back. I tell you my name or what do you do? Do you mind waiting for the meeting to end or you hang around? If it doesn't last too long, I don't know. We'll be done by six thirty. He's an excellent chair and runs a tight meeting. Thank you. Appreciate it Mr. Nelson. Okay. November 21st, there's just you and I, I believe we're here. The meeting or was I think you or I? I was at one of the absence. We still need one more person. One more person. We'll hang it up for next month on that. Okay, so that'll be end of the consent calendar. Committee reports, justina Garcia member. Any updates on grants and articles? I think on articles we were developing a new editorial calendar for the year, but since it started off with such tragic news with the wildfires I think we're going to revisit. I know we were expecting some cold weather, maybe some rain coming up in the next few months so we definitely recall from last year we had some flooding areas right that's risk for mudslides, landslides. I know you still have the bags outside for folks to come and pick up for sandbags to fill them up. So I think we really just need to double down on reminding people how to prepare for the months ahead. And then of course the year round wildfire issue and staying ready and really taking a note from what we've seen happening now and when you hear notices and evacuations just being really ready and prepared for that because it's been certainly tragic to hear what transpired. So I'll go back and revisit the articles at calendar. What we tried to do last year was make sure that we were covering a lot of the work that was happening here, whether it was a fire wise or work that L's doing, the work that Patty's doing. And of course, the work that John did, with Genesis, that all of those things are being covered to give a La Habra Heights residence a little bit of a flavor for what is happening at EPC, but I think we really need to revisit the editorial calendar in the year ahead and make sure we're putting out the most important information that's helpful as possible for residents and just important reminders and where to go for information and to stay safe. So I think that's all I have today. Any questions? And in regards to the zone, we'll pass on that. In regards to education, our definitely this year will have two or three Saturday sessions again to address all the emergencies. We have earthquake potential. We have flooding and rain that we're looking at winter months and then fire exposure as result of the recent. There's a couple of things I want to revisit just to let the residents know that we have been recertified as a firewise community for 2025. So we are in good standing and we still continue to add to our outreach and hopefully get more residents involved. And then in regards to the emergency, the emergency issued by the Department of Insurance are to the residents that were affected as a result of the wildfires. A couple things that are going to happen is that 60-day grace period from now for payments of insurance premium, then there's a one year more atorium of non-renewals and then renewals at least two more years for those folks that are there. What does that mean? We're not in that area, so they may take a complete different approach and my recommendation for our residents for 2025, within the next 30 days, I would recommend each of the residents to contact our insurance agent and revisit the policy. Make sure your coverage A is up to speed because a lot of these companies that these policies are 23 years old may not have adequate coverage and One of the things that the Department of Insurance Manated was there is no land value If you decide to move and build your home at another location, all the insurance companies obligated to pay for the replacement of the dwelling itself, not the land. So you may live in Pacific Palisades where land maybe ten times more than La Haber Heights. Yeah, so really, you know, as a resident of La Haber Heights, think of what you have. So my recommendation is to sit down with your insurance agent. Don't just look at just homeowners policy, but look at flood, look at earthquake, look at your auto policies, it adequate, you know, those are things that you should do at least once a year with your agent and spend 15, 20 minutes and understand what you have because what we're seeing with both Al-Tadina and Pacific policies, a lot of the folks were under in sure because they did not do the reviews. And if your replacement cost is at $120 per square foot, you're going to be one third of what's needed to build if not one fourth. So right now on the average for the Hobber Heights, we're looking at probably 400 to 450 per square foot because we are in a rural area and it makes it much more challenging. So take the heat and really sit down with your agent and make sure you have an appointment within the next 60 days to get your policy checked up and get the coverage is where it needed. Now we know as a result of last winter we're in a flood zone. If there is any water that comes into your house from outside in, it's considered flood. And if you don't have that coverage, you will not be a cover to know your homeowner's policy. So that's another thing that I recommend we do. And then take a look at additional living expenses. That's another, it takes somewhere between 12 to 18 months to rebuild your home, make sure you got adequate coverage to be able to move into a rental property and have additional expenses. Because if all your furniture is gone, it's going to be covered on your personal property coverage. But again, there's additional living expenses when you have to relocate and move. So take a look at that. And, you know, again, when you sit down with your agent, ask as many questions you can and walk out of there, making sure that you're fully comfortable. We will have another workshop this year, probably the second quarter on the coverage post or winter issues that may happen. But again, that's all I got to share on the education outreach, but again, you know, just as a closure. You know, one thing you should have ready is make a list of ready-set-go items. If you have important items, consider maybe taking a bank safety box and put it in there. Or make digital copies and keep it somewhere else at your office or send it to a relative and let them hold on to a digital copy of that because a lot of these folks that were less than 10 minutes to leave and we saw what happened with the gridlock. And it's not our issue right now but with the housing element, if that happens, we're going to have a lot more congestion And I believe one of the residents also indicated if in a minor situation it took 45 minutes to go somewhere that was typically only four minutes ago. So that's it for now on that. And then we don't have member Bradley, but I'm set to address the property. Anything on cert, Mr. Gomez? On cert, I'm looking to build a calendar. So for the next meeting, I'll try and pull out a draft calendar of activities that we're going to try and line up for. Definitely for the summer. If we do the concerts in the park, we will definitely be there and support those efforts and make our presence known. Continuing efforts to align with Whittier and LaHabra as far as what activities they're doing from a search standpoint, we are invited to attend their meetings so that we can start to build that network and also potentially join activities when they do some exercises. They themselves are also very small groups trying to organize, so I think we're all going through the similar process, but if we can do some training exercises together, that'll be some opportunities we're kind of looking for. For LaHabra, and if you want more information around CERT, you know, definitely look to the Los Angeles County Fire Department website. There is some additional training that's been posted. The one that is really important for us. LaHabra will be hosting a CERT training session. Three days, it'll be on March the first I'm sorry February 28th March 1st and March 2nd So that's coming up within just about a month from now So that's you know full sessions hands-on at the At the city center. With more information, just look at the information on the website. There's another training session coming up in Aguaar Hills and more training sessions are being scheduled. I haven't seen anything other than those two of late. The other opportunities that are coming up, La Marata is coordinating a disaster drill. And I believe that's gonna happen on February 8th. The challenge there is you'll need to have background checks to participate in that activity. There are some folks who are in our community that are part of the La Marada cert team. So I encourage those that can please participate. I will be a part of that. It will be with the Allie County Fire Department. And there's a small community, 55-nord community that needs to have their own evacuation disaster drill taking place and so we're gonna combine forces with a couple of those certain teams in the area to do that. So hopefully by the time that's overall try and bring some, some real, that entailed and looked like and hopefully we can do something similar for our group. And obviously with some of the situations the and and obviously with the with some of the situations are going on right now I've reached out to the office of emergency services in the county of Los Angeles as well as in Whittier They're busy right now so we will try and reconnect once things are calm down for them. The goal there was, I'm trying to get someone from that area to come and speak to us about, you know, not just what they're doing, but also, they're interested in making sure that they align with CERT and being able to kind of coordinate with us so that when something does occur, you know, how do they activate, reach out to us and pull us in. I myself, when the fires were starting last week, got pulled in from the La Marada circuit team to try and help facilitate some volunteering of distribution of water meals and whatever else for the fire department. I could not go. I was actually in fire in Big Bear volunteering at that site trying to help clear that community getting ready for in case some fire went up that direction. I think in that one, the lesson learned really is, you know, let's not wait to the last minute. I mean, I was in Big Bear because even though they had snow on the ground, people recognized that that snow was going to melt pretty quick and it's still fire season. In fact, when we were up there, the signage of their still said it was high fire danger because a lot of areas were not cover up so we were reacting unfortunately reacting to a bad situation already in place so again reminder don't wait for the last minute it's year-round fire clearance and you know we just need to in this community you'll see on top of that. That's it. Thank you, any questions? If not, verbal updates. We talked about far-wise, USA programs will have at least three workshops, community outreach program. We still need to get more folks to recognize that public safety emergency preparedness company does exist. And we're here to educate but we're an advisory board. We're not a board that's going to put ordinances in place or in that regard so we recommend any ideas or processes to the council and they would take over in that regard so all we could do is talk to our neighbors and let them know that this exists and we come along ways last year but we've got a lot more work to do. So let's see we reviewed any public comments not on the agenda anybody else needs to speak. Okay. Oh, we have one. Okay, please. It's a little late. I had to chase some like pack of coyotes out of my driveway. So let's see. I'm glad that you're following through with certain and getting that going. We had our first class here with the fire department in 05. And that was the first of three classes that I took. I took the sheriffs and LA County fire, not because I didn't pass, but because every time I asked somebody to take it, they wanted me to shepherd them. So myself and a few other people in the community are Acerd members, Advanced CERT with City of La Marotta. And they're a great resource out of Area E, which is makes up 25 cities in LA County. And it would really be good to, you know, when you get to the point where we could do some training and drills because there are quite a few people that are trained from previously that probably just haven't been, I don't know which of the word is, you probably don't know who they are yet, but we do have a starting point from that. And as you said, it's very important to prepare, you know, we had our meeting on Tuesday. It's also important. I don't think I mentioned it at the time, but besides your go bag, you should always have a pair of good walking shoes. Because if you're out and about in your dress shoes or your heels and you saw some people that had to band in their cars, it would be very difficult and uncomfortable in not having proper shoes. Also having money in small denominations, small bills because if it's a fire or an earthquake where the power is out, they're not going to be able to make change and you don't want to pay $10 for a bottle of water or something. So I was really encouraged seeing so many people that came out on Tuesday. We had a head count of 77, so that was good. And I'm more than willing to work alongside anyone that wants to. And so there's a lot of people out there that have different types of training and interest. So I would encourage you. I'm glad what you guys do and keep up the good work. Thank you. Got a question for you. It was a sidebar conversation before the meeting. As we go into 2025 and understanding the eminent threats of disaster, fire watch and public safety, emergency preparedness committee, possible the other committees that are within the city to come together, maybe have a one Saturday for our session to kind of delegate as to who's going to do what. And so that we bring all the people with knowledge together. Maybe that could further the mission of what we're trying to do to touch neighbors so they get more involved. I know, you know, this is all that you have a lot of contact and you communicate with a lot of the folks and if they can start getting involved with everything that we do, that only prepares rather than, you know, realizing I got 10 minutes of gotta go, what do I do now? And you know, we saw some noise on Facebook, one of the gentlemen recommended that everybody turn on their water spickets and water down your house when there's a fire. That doesn't solve the problem because then the water pressure gets really low and then fire department can't do their job. So these are things, education things that we'd like to do. And I think as we get into February, we'll maybe set a date, maybe we can consolidate somehow come together and understand each other's rule and really move forward. Because we don't want what happened in the other cities to happen here because we're in the same situation. And it only takes one fire. Yeah, and it is good to get together and brainstorm. And you brought up, you mentioned about the 45 minutes. I mentioned that at the Tuesday meeting, which was me when I lived on Hacienda. And this was after the freeways were reopened and traffic was moving on Hacienda. So once I got on Hacienda out of my driveway, I timed how long it took me to get to Whittier Boulevard, which is five minutes or less. And that was in moving traffic. And like I said, if we had had those fires, we would have been overrun like what happened in Australia. There's no way. And I always say, never, ever, ever wait to be told to evacuate, because by the time you do, everyone's going to be on the road, and it's going to be gridlocked, and you're not going to be able to get out. So it's important to have a plan, work that plan, and make sure everybody in your family knows what the plan is, where the meeting place is, so you can reunite and have some form of communication to do that. Thank you. Thank you. Next, staff comments? Just a couple of quick items this weekend. We actually have a couple of events going on. We have Hossiana Road cleanup. I'm be happening this weekend. If you haven't already spoken with Mr. Dominguez about that. You can reach out to him at beautifylhngmail.com. He will get you signed up. But we will be doing, depending on weather at the end of the day, I think we are going to be okay weather wise. It seems to be all right. Not too smoky, not too windy, not too crazy out there right now. We would usually kick off here, you know, some 6'45, 7'o clock meet up and then head out onto Hossianda and do some trash pickup. And at the same time, the quarterly cleanup will be going on at the park. So if you have bulky items, green waste, e-waste, documents to be shredded, all of that services will be happening at the park, starting at 8'o clock. So are you ready? And if you've got stuff to go, go. If you've been doing brush clearance, we'll have the front end loader there to help get rid of that green waste for you, which is a great way to do it. So those couple of things are going to happen in the weekend. So definitely join in. If you want to join in on either one of those, they're out there and available. and then in over the next couple of months, City Council wants to kind of have some workshop meetings with all of the committees. So we'll be reaching out and we'll have a workshop joint workshop meeting with City Council and Public Safety Emergency Prepareders Committee where you guys can all kind of talk about some of the good things that you've been doing and looking at how they can help and assist and give you some direction and some support to move on directions on certain things. So we'll be reaching out over the next month or two or I try to schedule all those meetings. So we'll reach out with a few dates for the committee to see what might work for you guys. Chief, you have anything you'd like to add? Not like this, but I think the direction that you're trying to go as far as making the community more aware, that's very important. And I know that every year we have the great shake out, so I'd like to probably I talked about doing stuff during fire service day. So I agree with you, Quinlance, have a couple more events where we enlighten the people who knows we might have a simulated evacuation event just to see because like I believe it's Karen right Kathy sorry she stated in a very important issue this thing about evacuation it looks good on paper it's good on paper. It looks good on a map, but in reality, it's probably the hardest thing in the world that you're going to try to accomplish. So if you have some formalized pre-planning where everybody participates and knows what they're supposed to do, and like I told them on Tuesday, there's no preparation for these kind of events. There's absolutely none. It's like walking into the sun. You have a wind-driven fire coming at you at 80 to 100 miles an hour. There's no preparation for that. But if we could be as prepared as we possibly can be getting the people out first and foremost, that would be a big accomplishment. So I think working towards having more events, more workshops enlightening the people because we get complacent. And we have a lot of older people here that just have to have that mindset put into them where they must get out. There's no other. I just met with the lady yesterday and I told her if I'm not going to wait, if a fire's eminent, it doesn't matter if it's five or ten hours out, we're going to push the button to tell everybody to start getting up because it's going to take a long time for you to prepare. Thank you. Just in closing comment. The City of La Habra does a love La Habra. We talked about this last year to probably likely happen. First Saturday of May and and it's a nationwide program, and maybe that is something we can strive for is to reach out to folks that volunteer on Saturdays for the cleanup to maybe start pulling in more folks and identify those properties that may need help. Those elderly folks and maybe I didn't have city can identify a reach out. Get them on their list and maybe we all go in as a group clean it up a little bit paint it up a little bit and give them a little bit more You know brush clearance and maybe home hardening Defensible space because that's gonna be the key this year The insurance companies are definitely doing aerial views some of these are two years old sometimes, and they're looking for that zero to five, complete, you know, defensible space. If you've got any potential brushes or any plants that could catch on fire, they're gonna tell you to give you 30 to 60 days to get rid of it, or they're gonna catch with your policy. So these are things that we gotta look for. So I think striving towards that love la Habra Heights program would be an ideal thing to hopefully make a better program. And then if we can kind of uniformly use the Facebook, I believe there's a lot more people jumping on now and we're getting a lot of input. So use all means of communications to get this information on. Let's get more folks enrolled this year and get them on the program with both Firewatch and what we're trying to do as a public safety emergency preparedness committee and it's not just limited to fire but earthquake and flood also. So with that any other comments? Okay, we'll close the meeting. Thank you. you you you you