When A Flooding Disaster Strikes:
Who's in Charge?

VOLUME 17, NUMBER 10               MARCH 10, 1997

While much of the major weather reporting consists of warning and advising people about dangerous storms, there can be an investigative role, too.
A large scale disaster tests everyone --- police, fire and other emergency workers, as well as the news departments.

In Sacramento,  severe floods did widespread damage during January, 1997. KCRA-TV News documented serious weaknesses in the emergency response system in the state.

Emergency officials issued conflicting information and orders

When massive winter floods threatened, some elected and appointed officials failed. Agencies that were supposedly monitoring the water levels did not properly warn the people in danger.

It was a story of chaos and confusion.
"The government bureaucracy in California is huge, overwhelming and not very organized. We discovered that during the floods," said News Director Bill Bauman.
He kept a file of all the faxes that came into the newsroom. Within the first 24 hours of the flooding on January 1st, they had received faxes from 47 different agencies!

The first problem was that everyone was in charge, but nobody was in charge --- overall.
"Our coverage area is 20 counties --- approximately 70 municipalities --- and every one has a police department, or a sheriff's department. There are boards of supervisors and city councilmen. There is a state Office of Emergency Services and a Department of Water Resources --- it goes on and on. Every one of them is in charge! They were all issuing faxes and orders. When it was over, I looked at the special projects producer and we both said, 'What a disaster!' The disaster was a disaster, because it was so confusing," said Bauman.

He and the news staffers realized what absolute chaos and confusion existed.
They set out to answer the central questions:
--- Who was in charge?
--- Who should have been speaking?
--- Who should the news media have been listening to?

Develop a timeline: What really happened?

Bauman assigned two special projects producers, investigative reporter Sam Shane and several photographers. They went to work on it immediately after the flooding, going through all their air checks and all the faxes.

They put together a minute-by-minute timeline.
"We did three weeks of very intense research. I was surprised how much information came out of our own air checks. We pieced it all together, and it was dead on accurate," he said.
"After three weeks of research about who was in charge, the answer came up: Everybody, but nobody!" said Bauman.

For the series, they picked three areas to focus on where there were major problems:
--- A county where a levee broke, and three people were killed.
--- A small town where officials at different government levels argued about whether to evacuate.
--- A town where officials delayed a flood warning so that they could announce it on television.

The investigation material was presented in a four-part series and a half-hour special.
"It really worked. We promoted it heavily, and people came to it," said Bauman.
The investigation was wrapped up with a half-hour special that ran on a Sunday night at 6:30. Many viewers were interested. The show did an 11 rating/26 share.

Series showed clearly when everything happened

The powerful videotape of the floods and the evacuations showed the danger.
The show airchecks documented the weather details and officials' actions as they were known at the time.
Fresh interviews provided the overview of what really happened.

The series examined how flood officials failed, how California's emergency warning system was filled with chaos, and how people died as a result.

One: The system fails

Reporter Sam Shane opened the series this way:

In a January 2nd live shot from an emergency center, a reporter explained that evacuations were just voluntary at that point. However, she said officials were watching the Feather River. The river, fed by record releases from reservoirs, rose to flood stage. The existing disaster plans for the communities called for mandatory evacuations if the river reached 77 feet.
However, even when the Feather hit 78 feet, officials decided not to call for a mandatory evacuation. It looked like the levee was holding. What officials did not know was the river was eating away at the earthen walls.
A volunteer who walked the levee spotted a boil and seepage. He reported it to authorities. Another volunteer was sent out 3 hours later. There were many, many boils. This man also warned authorities that there were big problems. On camera, these men recalled their actions. Despite what they had seen, there was still no evacuation order and no warning for the people of Arboga.
More boils were discovered on the Sutter County (west) side of the river. There, officials were very concerned and ordered a mandatory evacuation. One emergency official told KCRA on the air that night of January 2nd, "We think we have some problems out there, and we don't want to wait until it's too late. If you think you're going to have to evacuate this large of a number of people, you don't want to do it in a short period of time."

The footage showed people packing up their cars and fleeing.
But, in Yuba County, the elected supervisors thought there was no problem, and they voted not to order an evacuation.
"That vote would later be harshly criticized by residents," said reporter Shane.
Allowing people to stay would turn out to be "one of the biggest and deadliest mistakes in the Flood of '97," according to Shane.

The officials faxed a press release to the media, saying there were "no problems" reported for their county.
Twelve minutes later, a KCRA producer heard about more boils, and called the county OES office. He asked how the levees were holding. Again, the officials said there were no problems.
Shortly after 8 p.m., there was a massive break in the levee.

The video was dramatic. News crews and citizens fled the rushing water. One man told how the only warning he had was when he heard the levee break. He was one of the lucky ones who made it out alive.
More than a half-hour after the break --- the officials called for a mandatory evacuation.
"But, Yuba County officials are still not alarmed," said Shane in his narration.
A county official said on KCRA's air, "These people have time. The water will be moving south and they have time."
Wrong again.
The station's timeline reconstruction showed how wrong.
A man and woman were forced to the roof of their neighbor's home, where they were rescued by helicopter. Their next door neighbor also ran out of time. Her car was hit by the wall of water and washed off the road. She drowned. Two more people died, including the wife of the reclamation district's director.

It was bad enough to misread the river as it rose. But that wasn't all. It had been well documented that the levee needed strengthening.
The same levee broke upriver in the flood of 1986. It needed to be strengthened, according to experts. In 1991, an engineer predicted the levee would break the next time there was high water.

Shane summed it up this way:

Part Two: A confusing night in Oroville --- To evacuate or not?

During the height of the emergency, residents were wondering if they should stay or they should go.
There were officials telling people to do both at the same time!

The "communication meltdown" had played out on live television:

At 11 p.m. January 1st, KCRA lead the newscast with the news that county officials had lifted a mandatory evacuation order for Oroville. That made the town's leaders irate.
At 11:12 p.m., the reporter on the scene returned to the air saying the mandatory order had not been lifted.
The city manager said live during the newscast, "The county officials can do what they want to do in the unincorporated areas. The city (of Oroville) will do what it wants to do in its jurisdiction."

Bauman pointed to the Oroville bickering between governments, and the confusion it created, as a prime example of the official chaos.
The city of Oroville had sent the station a fax that said an immediate evacuation was ordered.
"So, we broadcast it. Then, we get a call from the Butte County Board of Supervisors saying they were not evacuating Oroville. We told them that Oroville was evacuating Oroville!" said Bauman.
The response from the supervisors was that Oroville was in Butte County and they were not evacuating Butte County.
"We went back and forth on whether or not Oroville was being evacuated. The county was saying, 'no.' And, the city was saying, 'yes.' That's just one example of how intensely confusing it was," said Bauman.

Part Three: The evacuation of Wilton is delayed

In Sacramento County, emergency officials knew ahead of time the Consumnes River would likely flood Wilton.
But, the people were not told about it, until it was too late.
While the water was rising, county officials waited for more than half an hour for TV cameras to show up before announcing the evacuation.

Here's part of Shane's report:

Less than 10 minutes later, the same spokesperson was doing a live phoner with the KCRA anchors, and was asked point blank if the people of Wilton or anywhere else in the county should evacuate.
His answer: "Not at this time, but there is a potential for an evacuation in south Sacramento County." The spokesperson said the Wilton area was an area of concern, and, "information will be forthcoming probably within the hour."

Twenty minutes later, at 11 a.m., a fax arrived notifying the news media the Wilton residents should leave by noon. But, many Wilton residents never got the warning.
Seven minutes later, the Consumnes was spilling over its bank and flooding Wilton.
At 11:15 a.m. --- eight minutes after flood waters washed into Wilton --- the officials who waited for the cameras held their news conference.

The Director of the State Office of Emergency Services subsequently told Shane that as soon as a decision was made to evacuate, people should be notified as quickly as possible.
Although there was no loss of life in Wilton, people were trapped, and many lost belongings because they had no warning.

Part Four: Who is in charge when disaster strikes?

During the floods, too many people were giving orders.
After the floods, "California's leaders have been virtually silent," reported Shane.
During a five-day period, the station received 425 news releases from dozens of agencies on a variety of topics --- ranging from evacuations to road closings to shelter locations.

The director of the National Hurricane Center was interviewed by satellite, and asked about how evacuation decisions are made during a hurricane, and how much teamwork is needed.
On the East Coast, when there is a hurricane, there is a clear, loud, distinct voice that comes from the National Hurricane Center. Everybody turns to it for information.
"There is no such thing here. It's called Home Rule. California is the state of Home Rule," said Bauman.

Butte County, for example, was a large, but thinly populated agricultural county.
Its OES office had one person in it.
"We interviewed him. He said they still have a six-gun mentality, and they wouldn't like having the state of California telling them what to do. That may have been quaint in the 1800's, but today with modern communications, it created absolute chaos," said Bauman.

Some officials angry about series

"On the one hand, we have offended a large number of public elected officials, as well as police, fire, and emergency officials. There may be some ramifications from that. On the other hand, people who were in those areas have uniformly praised the series of reports, because they lived through it and they know we are right," Bauman said.
"Nobody has challenged the accuracy of our reports," he stressed.

The news executive said the news team was thorough, documenting the disaster.
"There are 6,000 miles of levees in California. We actually interviewed levee workers who walked the levee the night before the levee broke, and went to their bosses and told them there were boils and bubbles in the levees and the levees were in trouble. We went back and interviewed people who were lifted off their roofs by helicopters," said Bauman.
"People say that only three people died, and that's not bad for a disaster. But, they don't know how many were plucked out of their cars, out of trees and off of roofs. It was very dramatic footage. We went back and interviewed some of those people, and they never knew to evacuate," he said.

Bauman pointed to a woman who lost 80 head of cattle and 10 horses, but whose dog was plucked off the roof by a helicopter. The rescue of the dog made a great story, but the real story was how close the woman came to death, he said.
"We interviewed her family and that woman was within seconds of being killed. Her next door neighbor was killed, because she waited. They were trying to round up their animals, and the water was 20-feet high and coming at them," he said.
"Those people were swept away and drowned!" he said.
Bauman said the local officials are "squealing like stuck pigs" over the series, but he knew it was accurate.

Subscribe to The Rundown, and  receive the latest successful ideas in local news, programming and promotion.  Top managers and staffers have been sharing their insights with us since 1981. 

Search the public portions of  The Rundown site.  
Search The Rundown Story Database.
Return to The Rundown home page

Copyright 2008, Standish Publishing Company.  This material is for your personal use as a subscriber, and may not be reproduced or transmitted to other parties of any kind.