The Senate Governmental Organization Committee today approved a pair of bills by Senator Nell Soto (D – Pomona) designed to prevent natural disasters such as the firestorms which devastated several California counties in 2003 – as well as to assist communities that have been struck by disasters to recover afterwards.

Soto's SB 477 would require the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) to have a community recovery process in place to respond to natural disasters, while SB 955 would enable the state to purchase emergency response vehicles using federal Homeland Security dollars.

Existing law requires that the director of OES provide financial assistance to local agencies for public real property that is damaged or destroyed by a disaster. SB 477 would require OES to establish guidelines for community recovery from emergencies or disasters and require that process to designate the office as the facilitator of the community recovery process until the relevant local agencies determine that OES assistance is no longer needed.

SB 477 also calls upon OES to provide training, and would require the office to:

• Be onsite as soon as practicable after an emergency or natural disaster occurs;

• Facilitate the use of temporary services and the establishment of temporary structures, including local assistance centers, showers and bathroom facilities, and temporary administrative offices;

• Encourage the participation of nongovernmental organizations in the community recovery process to supplement recovery activities undertaken by federal or local agencies.

Existing law also authorizes OES to acquire new or used firefighting apparatus and equipment for resale to local agencies and to assist agencies with acquisition.

SB 477 would require OES to acquire 150 additional multiple-discipline response engines using $25 million of California’s share of Homeland Security funding and assign them to the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and to fire protection agencies. The bill would also require the OES director to assign or reassign the engines in a manner that promotes their rapid mobilization, organization, and operation within strategically located geographic regions of the state.

“In the aftermath of the firestorms of 2003, it became clear that communities sometimes need a coordinated effort to recover,” Senator Soto said in presenting SB 477. “We owe it to the victims to improve public policy based on lessons learned.

“It is also clear that we can and must do much more in the way of disaster prevention and response,” Soto added. “SB 955 will ensure that both state and local agencies are better equipped to ward off and respond to emergencies and disasters.”