Following an extensive review after the devastating 2018 Woolsey Fire, Los Angeles County has adopted new protocols for managing emergency response to ensure better coordination, planning and messaging to the public.

The changes were approved Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and take effect immediately.

The action is in line with best practices now in place throughout the nation and state. Although federal and state emergency management systems were updated significantly in recent decades following catastrophic events such as the 9/11 attacks, L.A. County’s emergency services ordinance has remained essentially unchanged since it was first drafted in the 1970s.

Under the changes approved Tuesday, the County Code now:
– Specifies that the Chief Executive Officer is responsible for coordinating the County’s activitiesrelated to emergency preparedness, response and recovery
– Expands the membership of the County Emergency Management Council
– Specifies that the Sheriff continues to be responsible for operational command and control over law enforcement activities
– The new protocols bring Los Angeles County into alignment with modern best practices that recommend use of deeply-trained disaster management professionals to manage emergency functions that often span a full range of critical functions such as public health, housing and health services, in addition to public safety.

Both nationally and in the state of California, most emergency management programs and emergency operations centers are now managed by professional emergency managers that are organized within executive offices.

For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) leads emergency management for the nation and is housed in the executive branch under the Department of Homeland Security. In California, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services leads emergency management functions for the state and activates and manages the State Operations Center.

In Los Angeles County, the revisions approved by the Board shift the authority needed to activate the County’s Emergency Operations Center to the Office of Emergency Management (EOC), enabling the EOC to serve as the hub of a wheel coordinating a vastly expanded regional disaster response and “one voice” messaging across County departments.

Tuesday’s vote on the code changes had been originally scheduled for March 17, 2020, but that meeting was cancelled due to the COVID-19 emergency.

“The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was first established in 1850 when the population of the County was just over 3,500 people,” Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said in a statement. “Over the past 170 years, the role of County government has significantly evolved to now serve a population of over 10 million people that live across more than 4,000 square miles. The role of the Sheriff in responding to an emergency is important – but when it comes to multi-faceted and dynamic emergencies that extend beyond the focus of law enforcement and of unprecedented scale, scope and character, we need a modern-day response for which the governing body, namely the Board of Supervisors, is responsible. This is not a petty, ill-timed spat – this is about putting our best foot forward to address a pandemic with profound impacts to almost every aspect of our economy, health system, and human services.”

On Wednesday, addressing comments made by Villanueva after the Board’s decision, County Chief Executive Officer Sachi H. Hamai issued the following statement:

“It’s unfortunate that the Sheriff continues to bring issues to the media with the sole purpose of picking a political fight, rather than joining the County family in our urgent shared mission, which is the COVID-19 crisis. “The Sheriff should know, since the guidelines were sent out last week, that new federal benefits for employees affected by COVID-19 took effect beginning today. The guidelines for these programs are set by the federal government, not by the County. The Sheriff is responsible for his own decisions if he ordered employees to be placed on home leave. As a department head, he should be well aware that employees he orders to stay at home should be placed on paid administrative leave. If the Sheriff has any other concerns, he should be working with the County’s Department of Human Resources to address any individual employees’ situations and needs instead of going to the media with misleading information. It’s also important to note that the Chief Executive Office has been working every step of the way with the County’s labor partners to ensure that all employees are paid appropriately during this time.”

Read the urgency ordinance here.

Read the Woolsey Fire After Action report here.