Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, October 4, 2011 (Agenda)
Item A1
>> a 1 consider and take appropriate action regarding appropriate follow-up to address damage caused by recent wildfires and injuries suffered by county residents, including remaining fire issues, clean up in Travis County, collaboration with fema and other relief agencies, and related issues.
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>> and I'm hopeful this agenda item that we have today will help highlight areas of where the county can provide and assist in services and/or facilitate other resources to provide victim relief and fire cleanup.
the roles and responsibilities of the county I believe have been somewhat confused in this process in Travis County, particularly because of the massive fire in bastrop and the fema designations that bastrop has received that Travis County has not received.
and I hope you will clarify the public assistance part of that.
that said, though, I want all of the victims of the fires in Travis County to know that the county is here for you and we want to hear -- I believe we have some people at least from the spicewood area and we're here to help.
>> thank you, Commissioner.
I'm steven elfont.
we've had a few meetings with various folks involved in fighting the fires as well as helping with recovery.
and Travis County, as you know, can only do what state law says we can do so that's added to some of the consternation and some of the folks who live in these areas, they don't understand why their public agency that they pay taxes to can't help them more than we can.
there are some areas that we can get engaged in and have gotten engaged in.
there are some areas we have not been able to do what we would like to do.
and there are some areas that are in the transition between the actual fighting of the incident and recovery, which is kind of a fuzzy area between the responders and those who want to rebuild what they've lost.
these are some items I would like to present to the court that I think would help -- help us in helping them and things that we should be doing regardless of what type of incident we're dealing with.
these types of, I think, suggestions, have merit when we're dealing with flood events which is what we mostly deal with.
if you would bear with me, I would like to run down the list and if you feel like we need more information before we pursue it, that would be great.
if you feel like you need a legal, we can table it.
if you have the time, I would like to roll down through them.
>> why don't we hear that and then let's listen to residents who have come done to address us.
>> number one, partner with fire service providers to develop a systematic groups.
the issue there is information is coming in and requests are coming in from all direction going to different entities.
some may not have anything to do with the type of response, but they can help get that information to the right party.
we need to do a better job of receiving that information and communicating it out.
so we would suggest partnering with those emergency service providers to do that would be helpful.
number 2, set up temporary permitting operations at a location near where the rebuilding is going to occur.
we can pick up our permitting operation and carry it to the field.
we would like to have locations access to the network, but if it's a small enough event, we can deal with the manual issuance of permits.
number 3, waiving those permit fees.
each person who is needing to rebuild should come in and get a county development permit.
it's a cost of 50 bucks.
you wouldn't think that's a big deal, but to come all the way downtown to do that and to pay that fee under those circumstances can be -- can be a problem for some of them.
so we would ask the court if they would be willing to waive that fee for those who were directly affected by the event.
create an emergency fund account that can be used to pay contractors needed for cleanup efforts off county rights of way.
you all know we cannot go outside of our right-of-way and benefit private property by cleaning up their debris or doing other work on their property.
it's not within our legal authority to do that.
but considering the nature and the extent of the emergency there could be issues of health and safety that may give us what we need to go on to that private property.
that, I'm sure, you would want to talk with the attorneys about.
establish job order contracts for cleanup services needed off of the county rights-of-way.
one thinking was if we can't send our group off the right-of-way, can we hire contractors to go do that work and funding, of course, would be the issue there.
how would we -- where would we get the funds from that level of effort, and it could get to be very expensive.
develop resource fact sheets forks fema, Travis County t.n.r., national disaster assistance organizations.
again, just getting right information out to folks in a timely manner.
this is one document that would answer a lot of questions that come in, you know, after the event has occurred, and hopefully this will get them to the right folks, give them contact numbers and save them the hassle of who to call and where.
develop a county website or facebook page to disseminate frequently requested information.
and the reason for the facebook instead of our internet site is folks have likely lost their computers at home during the event so this is a way they can still connect to us and get information.
if we can establish that -- something like a facebook page.
develop fact sheet to explain county areas of responsibility and legal parameters and identify roles of other agencies such as the Texas forest service, lcra and others who may have jurisdiction in the vicinity of the incident.
this might help them to understand more quickly there are things we can and cannot do legally.
provide printing services at no charge to provide the information.
I mentioned a couple fact sheets.
we have a printing shop.
we are talking about issuing perhaps thousands of brochures and there are some brochures offered by the forest service that instruct folks how to avoid fire damage from their home.
building a barrier around their home, a defensible barrier.
if we could get that information out to them it might help reduce the extent of damages in the future.
there is a cost associated with printing that and if we could get that at no charge, it would be helpful.
provide limited mitigation collection and disposal services.
one of the major areas of concern that we have is after an event such as this, folks may bring out to the curb or leave on their property hazardous materials.
and those need to be dealt with very -- in a very specific manner to be within compliance of environmental rules and regulations.
we do have the ability to do some amount of that, but we don't have the ability to provide that service countywide or perhaps not for very large incidences as well.
if we can't do it ourselves, funding for a contractor to do it would be an alternative perhaps the court would like to consider, but it is a very specialized type of debris that has to be dealt with under certain regulations.
partner with capcog in adjacent counties to fund and complete a wildfire assessment study of the region.
we don't have this and it would certainly be helpful for us to be able to see the high risk areas for wildfire, an overlay on that the development that is in those areas.
and it may help to discourage some folks from building in areas that have -- that have a designated high risk to them, hopefully reducing future impacts.
develop a fact sheet on the management of vegetation and preserves.
one of the issues that has come up from various folks is that there is a concern that 2 preserves that we manage, the balcones canyon land preserve, for example, is a future fuel site, a site of a fire.
there is some information that needs to be gotten out to folks to explain what it is that those preserves are there for, how we can manage it and what risk there is associated with it.
there are perhaps some things that we can do to reduce that risk further, but it should be noted that none of the fires that did occur recently were in the reserves.
but folks are linking it to fuel source and fire, an education campaign essentially.
fund a public information officer position.
I know we've talked about this in the past.
a single point of contact sure would be helpful at the county.
support fire service provider initiatives to educate the public, prevent fires, create or improve fire fighting buffers, improve communications including reverse 911 notifications, evacuation planning, anything that the fire service providers can think of and want to do we ought to be behind them.
we don't want to take on any of the responsibility they have, we're not trying to do that with these suggestions, we're trying to give them support and to kind of fill in the spaces where they don't pick up and we don't pick up routinely.
again, there's some gray area there.
and support efforts to establish multiple ingress and egress for fire fighting and evacuation.
as you know, some of the areas where the fires occurred, steiner ranch in particular, there was one way in, one way out essentially.
the fire service providers have indicated that if they could find -- if we can designate or create for them an alternative way into the area that needs the fire fighting equipment because the one way in is being used by the people evacuating, that would be a good thing.
it's going to take some planning and some sitting down with folks this the community and the fire service providers as well to do such a thing, but it may not -- it may be a very good thing to do particularly in the larger subdivisions that have limited access.
those are the things we came up with on short notice.
I'm sure there's other ones that maybe some of the folks who actually live through this disaster could let us know about and we could add that to the list.
but if there are some things you feel comfortable with moving on, we would like to go ahead and do that, start implementing some of these things.
>> questions or comments regarding these recommendations?
>> I have some, but I'm going to wait to be structured kind of in the order you wanted to go and I do have some questions, but I can wait until persons from the community speak.
if that's appropriate at this time, judge.
>> that's fine with me.
shall we assume you have not run these by the county attorney's office?
>> that's a couple questions I need answered.
>> if you are here on this item, please come forward.
you do not need to sign in, but miss wisdom, judy wisdom and pamela eddie, okay, and richard francis.
good morning.
>> good morning.
I'm judy wisdom, and I belong to bee creek united methodist church and we've been very involved in serving the people who were burned out.
in the fires -- this is not this week's list, but I believe this is right that there were 131 homes that were in the burn area and 45 of them were completely burned.
and most all of the ones that I go to are about as high as this table.
whether they were two story or one story, they are this tall now.
and or either they are hauled off to the junkyard now, so a few of them are.
I've worked with a lot of people.
one guy when I first went in, I take water and a few other people from my church and we take water and snacks and that kind of -- you know, clothes, shovels, whatever they need, stop and put out fires with shovels.
I've done that.
I've helped hunt for an emmy award that guy had won.
I've helped people that -- one guy had on a pair of shorts and a shirt and no shoes and all he wanted to know could we check on his neighbors.
his shoes melted off when he was on the way out.
I have collected items from the fire that are melted together like a ratchet set with just some metal melted on it.
that was the engine of the lawn mower the guy was working on.
car engines.
aluminum ones make really pretty sculptures when they melt on the ground.
I mean it's just amazing.
there are a lot of needs out there and a lot of them are being met, but it's a very eclectic community.
one guy I talked to yesterday said if he paid his medicare payment, he couldn't pay for medicare because then he would only have $500 a month to live on and there are a lot of people -- I've been out there just under 130 hours in the last month.
so there are a lot of needs that are just basic needs.
if you -- if you take two hours of your life and everything you think about or touch you don't have anymore.
whether it's your driver's license, your car, whatever it is, you don't have it anymore.
one guy was sleeping on a mattress and box springs because that was all he had -- somebody brought him that outside.
a lot of them have no water, no electric.
the electric is getting better, but our community in that area does not have a water system, consequently they each have a well and it has a pvc pipe at the top and when the fire came by it was between 2200 and 2700_ and it melted that off and the pump fell down to the bottom.
and I have heard 14 to -- $1,400 up to fish the pump back out so they can get water.
so there's really a lot of basic living needs that are out there.
thank you.
>> ms. Wisdom, does the church have set hours that they are open for victims to come?
>> we are working with grace outreach church because it is up on highway 71 and we're about three miles off 71 and people can get their easier.
another thing I've been doing is handing out gift cards for gas and h.e.b.
and wal-mart, but where we are, if you go to wal-mart in marble falls, which is the closest one, that's approximately a 40-mile round trip.
well, you just used up on lot of your gas to get there if you have a car that didn't melt to the ground.
>> does grace outreach have, say, a schedule?
>> yes, sir, and I believe it is 10:00 to 5:00 or 10:00 to 6:00.
I believe that's right.
and they have a food part and they have a wall of bottled water that you can go and get.
if you can get there.
I've been going by and taking a lot of that and taking it out to the field and just giving people cases of water and shovels and food.
and they also -- we have another building that has clothing in it that they've stopped taking clothing because we have had so many donations.
the whole bottom floor of this building has tables with clothes stacked about that high on it.
and they can go there and get clothes.
if they can get there, which is an issue for some of the people.
>> so for the -- for residents of the 45 homes that burned, what housing do they have?
>> one lady told me that her -- a friend of her daughter had a duplex that was available so they got to move to that, but it's in anderson mill, on anderson mill, which is 50 miles away.
so one -- several of them have travel trailers, fifth wheels and just regular travel trailers.
and some of them are living with family.
I know there's one area where there were two mobile homes and they had 13 people living there and the fire burned all the way around but it did not burn their homes, but burned all the land around them.
>> so the families individually are really trying to survive as best they can.
>> yes, sir.
like we bought a mattress and box springs and took to the two mobile home area because one lady had breathing problems and she could not sleep because of the smoke in the mattress she was trying to sleep on.
>> okay.
ms. Eddie.
>> pam eddie, I live on pedernales point drive in the paleface pedernales subdivision in spicewood.
it's really emotional to hear her talk about.
we were greatly blessed.
our house wasn't touched, but we lost one, two, three, four houses totally destroyed on our -- in our subdivision.
and we have neighborhood water -- it is a Texas nonprofit water supply corporation that's under the Texas water code, but it's just our neighbors that are members and so we kind of govern ourselves and we provide water to -- there were 22 meters on our system.
all of our pressure tanks, all of our pumps, all of our equipment was completely destroyed in the fire except for our water storage tanks.
one -- one is a concrete tank and the other is a fiberglass tank.
and both somehow managed to make it through the fire and still had water in them, but we since have learned that the concrete water tank has some damage, it's leaking, and so we've -- I'm getting ahead of myself what.
we did was we originally had, like, $22,000 in our bank accounts and we pretty much depleted all of that replacing all the pressure tanks, fixing the wells.
and replacing the pumps.
so we do have water going to people, but we don't have safe water going to people.
we did assess to all the members that are on our system, everybody chipped in $400.
we're trying to get water purification equipment and system installed, but it's -- it's just really hard for all of us to do that.
I want to thank you for -- I want to thank the bee creek united methodist church.
those people are awesome.
so that's really kind of why I'm here, the concern in our neighborhood at this point for the people that are still there is the getting the safe water.
and so it would be great if we had -- and I don't know, any kind of financial assistance to help us get all that back up.
we still need to -- we fixed one of the wells and are about to fix the second well and -- but we still -- and then we assembled the money to get the water purification system in place, but we still need structures, the pump station house was totally destroyed and the little well houses that go around the wells.
>> did the nonprofit carry insurance on the water system?
>> we didn't have insurance but we are going to have insurance now.
so we've pretty much depleted all of our funds.
>> in this process, has all the necessary contacts been made through the proper assistance such as fema and all these other concerns, have that been done?
>> I did go and meet with the fema representatives that were at the pedernales fire department auxiliary in Briarcliff.
>> what did they say?
>> they told me that the county -- they put me in touch with the county emergency manager.
they said actually for a water supply corporation, they are there to basically help individuals, but that perhaps the county could get public assistance funds to help us.
>> so fema backed off of what you requested?
the federal government backed off --
>> as far as requesting assistance for the water supply system.
>> fema only assists individuals.
>> okay, okay, but I'm just saying individually, that's what I'm talking about.
the individual situation that you had, not basically your water supply, I'm talking about the individual because there's been several individuals that have been impacted.
now, I don't know what the range of the impactedness is per person, but my question is the assistance that fema is -- has applied not only in bastrop county, where are we with the fema assistance in Travis County?
that's what I'm trying to get to is dealing with the folks that have had the -- the bad experiences with the wildfires.
and that's what I'm trying to get to.
>> I don't know.
I assume that people -- the ones that had lost everything, I don't know if they've -- if they were insured or not and if they got assistance from fema.
I know we sent an email to everyone, distributed an email to -- how to get in touch with fema to do that.
because they were encouraging us to have the individuals register, but I don't --
>> I was contacted directly by fema before.
I got your message, but before I went to fema, they had actually called me.
so there is a system, and I'm amazed the number of calls I've gotten from disaster relief organizations, the lions club, the churches.
as far as incoming calls, and we've only had minor damage at our place.
so they are at least -- you know something is happening out there, understanding what each organization does.
tends to be the problem.
your idea of an education campaign, you know, we probably don't even begin to understand the limits you have to operate under.
and my concern is there's a pretty good spicewood rumor mill floating right now that you folks think that everybody out there is wealthy and nobody needs any help.
I don't believe you believe that, but perceptions, even though when they were not based on fact are real and we just -- we just don't need that rumor spreading around, but it's out there, they think everybody has their big homes and there's a lot of folks that have second homes.
I live in town, fortunate my wife and her sister inherited a 19.
1950 house that didn't get burned.
you go ahead and finish.
>> judge?
if I may just insert here because this is really important for people to know and the numbers change according to the fema applications, but my most recent numbers were of the 32 applications to fema that had been made, 28 of those were uninsured.
of the damaged homes.
>> 28?
>> that's a very high number out there.
>> it's amazing to watch.
we have neighbors in our neighborhood who lost everything, I mean houses totally vaporized.
and I'm still dealing with a very good insurance company, everything is going to come out fine on our burned shed and all the trees we lost.
you don't get anything for that, but what was amazing to see is while I'm even waiting for the adjuster to show up, caravans of church people showed up.
and the neighbors there on paleface point drive, their lots are -- you don't -- there's no debris, there's nothing.
the volunteer system worked completely.
and I would also like to thank you folks for the work that -- I was out there getting my son's -- some of his drums out of our house, but the constables and the sheriff were exemplary on the day of the fire.
and by exemplary, I mean being there, and I observed how they handled some pretty irate good old boys wanting to get into their house.
at least in the instances I saw, it was exemplary because, you know, I thought I was going to see a massive altercation.
>> thanks for that.
>> and those folks handled it beautifully.
but one of my concerns is that --
>> just for the record, you are mr. Richard francis.
>> yes.
I have an old place out on paleface point drive that sits down on what used to be the river.
icwe0zasy(9 no carrierringct saved his home trucked buckets of water from the swimming pool to put out fires around the homes that hadn't caught yet to keep them from catching and ours was one of them.
I mean, as we stayed in touch with our neighbors that day and they said so and so's house is gone, so and so's house is gone, and we're not on the river front, we're across the street, but the -- I didn't understand -- there was no way, I didn't understand how there could be any way that those houses were gone without that fire having gone through our property.
so when you talk about the things that you -- I mean, we were so blessed and part of it is I think god wanted me back in the fold so I had been having my doubts about so many horrible things in the world, how can there be a god, but an angel, literally a barricade of angels placed around our house, I don't know how.
so it was real important for me to come back.
and then the other thing was to see how the people, there's so many more good people in the world than evil.
so I got those two very clear messages from god and he is there, I can be mad at him if I want, but I need to keep talking to him.
anyway, this neighbor apparently was tractorring over buckets of water from his pool that he jumped in when he thought he had made a bad mistake and was about to leave that's how bad the fire was at his home.
he put the littler fires out that hadn't reached the homes that hadn't caught.
he knew there was nothing he could do about the ones already burning, but ours was one of them and it's still --
>> we had no water in the system so when we got to our place we drained our hot water heaters, we have two hot water heaters and after we drained that we opened the refrigerators and put out one fire with a gallon of apple juice.
>> [laughter] and wasted some good beers on a few other ones.
it was --
>> the cedar trees would smolder at the base so we had cedar trees along the back fence like, they are all gone out you you you now, but we put out a couple of hot spots after we got back.
>> I would like to say one lady I talked to this past week said that the firefighters circled her house and fought it off.
and all -- all the property is black or fried cactus.
now, that may not be all bad, but she said they just stayed there and kept it from burning her house down.
>> they did that on our street too.
>> I have a question about your water system.
have you identified any resource for assessing the value of the damage and the repair of that?
>> no, we've just kind of done it ourselves and you can jump in at any time.
>> we're very fortunate there's some guys out there that are take new hampshire natural.
I can -- phenominal.
I can barely drive a nail or screw, but they've got it up and running where we at least have water.
to me, how they did that, it was wiped out.
totally wiped out.
and so I don't think -- they didn't spend a lot of time assessing costs, they just saw what they needed to do and did it, used the money we had to assess the rest of us to keep us for a time being and we're raising our minimum water fee to help replenish the kitty because what's going to happen the next few years, while these houses are being rebuilt, there will be half as many people on the system paying into it.
>> one, of course, one of the things on our agenda is to get insured once we get everything rebuilt.
>> so we don't know what the purification part will cost?
>> it's about -- the new president of our corporation has gotten a bid for -- it's $3,300 for all the equipment installed and then there will be -- like there's a monthly recurring charge, there will be somebody that can come and take the tests and do all the things you have to do that the state requires to make sure it meets the requirements.
>> so if we could waive a magic wand at the county and provide whatever assistance is necessary, what, in your view, should we do?
>> well, financial assistance would be the -- I think the best thing for our water supply, if we could get some.
>> I don't know how many other small water systems were impacted.
>> I don't either.
>> but it's severe.
that would be the most crucial thing.
we have part of our waterline ties into the system is above ground because it comes down a limestone cliff.
and so we -- it burned about 40 feet of our water coming from their system to our house, and that's the quickest thing usaa, our insurance company, jumped on.
>> would you repeat that about the insurance company?
>> that was the first thing we jumped on.
while we're still debating the value of a 20-year-old aluminum boat and all the screens stored, they did not question.
they said we've got to got this fixed, there's a neighbor, the same fellow that works on the water system that ties us back in and they just took his invoice and paid it right off the bat.
>> the insurance companies will cover the waterline on your property line that ties into the water corporation.
>> and I'm frankly amazed they covered the assessment.
>> mine did too.
>> that we got from the water supply organization.
I thought they would tell me since the damage was not on my property that their policy would not cover it.
>> mine did too.
>> they covered that but they would not cover the cost of ten fire extinguishers and some gratuity we paid for the crew that came and helped us put out hot spots that day.
they would not -- they would rather we not do that and let the house burn to the ground in which case they would have a huge claim.
I didn't follow the logic on that one.
>> and ours did too.
all state has been awesome.
I mean we are in good hands.
>> that's if you are insured though.
I have had real concerns about the water --
>> right --
>> quality in the individual wells because none of this is on any type of municipal water type supply system.
and the majority of these homes and particularly the 28 that are uninsured, they are all on wells.
and I know from my own research that depending on how the well was constructed in the first place and the age of it and the nature of the fire impact on it, that some of these wells may be toxic now.
and I don't know, have not yet myself been able to identify anyone who is out there actually evaluating these.
and some people may not realize that this is a problem in and of itself.
>> lcra will come and check them for a nominal fee they said last week.
>> they do just the water quality testing.
>> just the water quality testing, right.
>> but if it's not producing because the well pump has fallen down into it, there's no way to assess whether that water is potable or not.
>> what -- this is one of the issues we keep coming up against on so many levels even before this historic fire is that there -- in the state of Texas, there is really very little regulatory scheme, much less inventory of what wells are out there.
>> it's pretty much a frontier environment.
>> it is.
>> if your well goes bad, you are on your own.
you've got to either fix it, get another well, whatever.
I mean that's kind of how it is out there.
>> right.
>> and the mind set of the people, not they are just sitting there expecting the county to come be their savior, the mind set of most of the people is just the opposite or they wouldn't be living out there.
there is a I can fix it mind set, but it's tough.
>> judge, I think it might be appropriate if we paused and let pete discuss some of the fema levels and particularly the difference between individual assistance and public assistance and the qualifications for those.
>> I can do that fairly quickly, Commissioner.
pete baldwin, Travis County emergency management coordinator.
if you would allow me, I would like to go back and address a few things that were hit earlier in some of the conversations.
we did have a conversation with the water supply corporation.
sba, I just heard from them yesterday, they said they are able to provide loans to nonprofits, so even though fema says we can't do this for an individual -- we only help individuals, sba is -- has that ability to help local nonprofits.
so we need to follow that.
and also I will share with you after the meeting, I got an email late last night that there is some assistance coming out for water antiseptic from fema.
and I will share that with you.
I just got that late last night.
>> actually mr. Baldwin is the person that fema referred me to.
>> and I left my wallet at home that day.
I didn't have the money that fema said we had to hand out.
>> exactly.
>> [laughter]
>> I apologize.
the other thing, sir, your comment about t cad, we provided that list to them but you are right it was the fema list and it was the best we had at the time.
it was the one that they actually went out when they went around and did the individual assessment and wrote down the addresses and everything, that is what was provided for them because after the Commissioners court made that vote, we had to get something to them.
so you are correct, that's a fema list, my transport on it.
and Commissioner Davis, I wanted to mention very quickly about fema.
fema has been in here, and I can't -- I didn't bring it with me, I don't have off the top of my head, the number of people in Travis County that have registered, the number of -- the amount of money for housing assistance that has been granted, now, I need to qualify that in a second, and the other category is needs assessment, medical, dental, funeral, repairs, any other disaster related, that's a considerable amount that has been -- people told they have been made eligible for.
however, that money -- I am not aware of whether that money has ever made it to the individuals.
I suspect not because it wasn't until last Monday, Monday before last, that the federal government actually funded these disasters.
and that is something that a lot of people don't understand is that oh, we got declared, where's my money.
if the money is not in the federal budget, then they have to go back and appropriate it.
in fact, the three fires, spicewood, steiner and the Pflugerville fire, those were not funded, although they were declared the day after the fire, those were not funded until just recently.
so it's very frustrating to be -- when they say you are eligible to receive this amount of money, it's like when.
whenever it's in the bank we'll get to it.
>> the reason I brought that point up was because I wanted to make sure that fema, the federal government side of this, has exhausted all their I guess attention to these folks that have been impacted.
and of course there still are some loose ends, it appears to me, because the folks that are here today testifying before us have not yet been contacted by fema I guess to say, well, here are the things that we may can do, may not can do.
you brought up the water situation, well application through small business administration, stuff like to that, still appears to be a disconnect.
it's not as aggressive as I think it should be, that's what I'm saying.
and what I'm hearing is that we've still got folks in a holding pattern.
and being in a holding pattern like that, they can't land and they want to bring some things to closure.
and my concern is that it's not moving fast enough to bring things to closure whereby I just think it could be more done as far as as soon as we hear the news, it just appeared to me those folks who had been impacted ought to share the same things that we hear or somebody needs to get the word to them.
and that's the water, the structural damage, the whole nine yards, in my opinion.
that's just Commissioner Davis speaking.
>> let me finish, let me do this real quickly what Commissioner Huber asked me to do to begin with and the difference is because once we received the federal declaration, that was for the individual assistance.
funding.
that is for individuals.
so I have no doubt that that fema rep that was out who specializes in individual assistance had no clue as to whether or not nonprofits or whatever.
so they basically said we'll call the county.
they might help.
that -- I mean I assume that.
fema has done a good job of being in here fairly quickly.
we coordinated the assessment teams, took them out, they brought in their community relations teams, we set up the disaster recovery center there at the fire station and one over in steiner ranch.
we've been in both places.
so there has been a good push to make people aware that they need to register or how to register or even some of these community resource outreach people, they register them over their own phone.
so there's been that effort.
that's the good news.
the bad news I don't know where that money is in the pipeline and I will try to find out.
the difference is we did not have been not been declared for public assistance, p.a.
public assistance helps off set the cost 75/25 for debris removal, emergency response, paved roads, water supply corporations, which would help if that kicked in, parks, things of that nature, other categories.
but we have not been declared for that.
and the reason -- the reason I don't think that we will make the public assistance threshold is because the three fires, steiner -- I mean the spicewood, steiner and Pflugerville fire, were all declared under different grants of -- they were declared fire mitigation assistance grants.
which means it's good because we get the emergency response personnel costs will be reimbursed on a 75/25.
however, we cannot use any of those costs to meet our threshold for the dollar amount that we needed to make the public assistance.
and those were our three biggest fires.
so without that, I don't see us having 3.3 million in expenses because we can't count individual and we can't count those -- the response to those three big fires.
>> pete, how do we go about evaluating those, those factors that might apply to that threshold level like the water supply corporation that we just heard about today?
obviously there's a -- a cumulative number associated with that damage.
there are probably others out there in that same category.
do we have a mechanism for evaluating that?
>> if we find out there's areas in there, we try to assess damages like we've talked to pedernales electric.
we know they've got a substantial amount but it's not going to be even half the amount.
we know Austin energy has costs associated with it.
so we've been trying to gather those up and basically we submit an updated disaster summary outline, then they come in and they will maybe bring in some public assessment teams to go out and talk to folks and look.
and I know you just said you all spent about $22,000 out of your reserve, so we'll throw that into the mix under water supply corporations, you know.
it's -- it's -- if people don't call and say we've got approximate damage on this, then there's a lot of times there's very little that we -- because we may not even know there's a water supply corporation out there.
>> given the 6400 acres that burned out there and the -- the dispersal of the different residences and clusters of residences, it seems like we're coming right back to where steve kicked us off, we need a central -- for this -- particularly for the spicewood fire because of its geographic size and lack of municipal water supplies and things like that, that we really need a very single specific point of contact that can triage information, receive information, feed it to the appropriate he want at this time that need to do these assessments.
because I'm really troubled we're not moving fast enough for this and the gaps that may exist there.
one other question I had was I understand red cross provides some immediate housing and cash assistance for those who are burned out and uninsured or until they can make the contacts necessary.
can you elaborate on what the perceived gap may be between exhausting the red cross service for these -- particularly for these 28 we know of that were uninsured and funding for fema?
because I believe I understand and hear that there are housing issues, people are having to find their own housing and maybe not even locally because it is -- it isn't a densely populated area.
to me that's a gap that needs to be addressed.
whether or not the county can address it or whether we can find something to help in a housing situation, I don't know, are you familiar with people that are really having problems?
you mentioned several that were living somewhere else because there wasn't a place nearby.
>> well, I know that our next door neighbors lost everything and their daughter is on a softball league whose teammates' families pulled together and got them a duplex in marble falls and funded it for I don't know how long and fully stocked everything, totally from the goodness of their neighbors' hearts.
>> were they uninsured?
>> they were insured so I don't know what the plans are, if they are going to rebuild out there or do something else.
>> we're in contact with earl matthews' daughter's parents who are living in his house.
if we get our place cleaned up, they may want to come and they may stay at our place for a while.
>> where are they staying now?
>> that I don't know.
>> people have been very generous.
I've heard many offers for housing and it's a community that's been helping themselves, but I still am quite worried about things slipping through the cracks.
>> we all need an education.
we don't know who to -- and like you said earlier, just the simple deal, here's what we as the county can or cannot do would be a good start.
and a single phone number would be ideal, but it's -- even the idea of I'm negotiating to get our debris removed from our shed and the simple issue of who is legally liable for the hazardous waste that might have been in there.
if I turn it over to a contractor, does he assume the -- I don't know the answer to that.
but that's something that has to be discussed.
>> it sounds like, you know, y'all have worked together to come up with a good list for immediate responses for the Commissioners court to consider, as well as a list of long-term preparation responses.
because I mean as much as I fear that we -- you know, I hope we never see anything like this again, but considering our -- our urban-rural interface and we are blessed with incredible countryside, I think we do have to learn from this experience and prepare for the next one.
so along with immediate responses to consider, long-term preparation, it also sound like we should probably -- and I know some of this is already occurring with Commissioner Huber's assistance, but develop some neighborhood brainstorming with various assistance organizations to educate one another both to serve and the serving.
>> there's a meeting tonight I think at one of the churches, just a legal clinic to advise people who have had damages to come in and at least get some information on some of the legal.
>> and to establish one credible clearinghouse for as much of the information as possible.
>> there's a few hurdles I think that we still need to address, I think especially on the legal end as far as what the county can do and what we really are not able to.
and I guess we will have to get maybe some legal interpretations on some of this.
an example, entering person's property to maybe clean it up, maybe the hazardous materials, who is going to be responsible out of the county and indemnify itself and maybe it's upsetting right of entry type situation as far as right-of-way.
a lot of things like that may need to still be flushed out.
but let me get to this, though, as far as pete brought up a point and richard, you brought up a point earlier about being added to the tcad list because he were left out.
pete, I understand how fema did an assessment basically to see who's property was as far as providing a list for the county to look at as far as providing some relief as far as assessing their property.
my concern is where are we now because that was one of the key point questions that was brought up in the discussion before the Commissioners court when we looked at trying to look at that list to see if tcad could get that particular list or those persons that property had been damaged, and, of course, we look at the proceeds as far as doing something about it as far as granting maybe some relief as far as dealing with your taxes.
my concern, though, today is how and where are we on that list, and what avenue is made available just in case there is a person that may not be on the list, what process can we employ to make sure that each person that would like to be added to that particular list will have that opportunity.
there has to be a -- a -- a point whereby this can be advertised to some extent where persons will not be left out but be included as far as relief, as far as tcad assessing their property.
so I don't know where we are on that finally, but I do know that was a concern.
and again I want to go back to some of those identification things that I mentioned earlier, and it's a lot in this particular recommendation.
however, I would like to also make sure that -- we talked about three situations here in Travis County.
we talked -- and, of course, one -- another one in the Pflugerville area.
of course, Pflugerville, have they had a chance to input into this situation.
spicewood and, of course, steiner, but what about the Pflugerville area?
so I want to make sure that if we end upbringing a product back, if it ends up developing some kind of policy after we look at this, then what involvement have we had with those persons that were impacted the most, ones that have felt the sting of this particular fire disaster.
I think they are the ones that can really say this is that and -- I wasn't there and I wasn't in the fire and lord knows I sympathize with you and my heart goes out to you and I think all of us have said that and expressed that from this court.
but at the end of the day you have to live what we're talking about.
you live it.
we're talking about it.
and since you do live it, I just feel that you should have a say I in how to remedy to make sure that this particular situation is minimized to a great degree in the future.
but I want to share it with Pflugerville, I want to make sure Pflugerville residents have a say in this also because they were also impacted.
>> Commissioner, I can tell you that the two homes that were destroyed in the Pflugerville fire were included in the tcad.
>> not in the tcad but as far as particular recommendations.
>> we will make contact with any of them, I think this ought to be shared with all of the county.
this is something we're looking at for long term.
>> okay.
>> did we give the three of you an opportunity to speak fully?
>> I'd like to add one little thing and that is as far as the churches, different churches out there who have gotten together and they've adopted families, they are considering it a two to three-year obligation with those people.
that's how long it will take for them to get everything cleared -- be back where they were.
>> and that is tremendous because we know from other fires like this in other parts of the country that there is a victim dropoff after the event where they feel abandoned by their community who was there for the benefit of them in the first month and there is something to be guard against for the churches to think this way.
>> any other residents who would like to speak before we take action?
on the legal questions, some of these involve lawyers other than the two here today.
we have been asked basically to try to reduce questions to writing, have those on the court's agenda next Tuesday for a response from legal.
but of the recommendations that we heard, some of those we can act on today.
>> number one down here, systematic record of triage and information from victims responders.
I they if we set it within our umbrella the triage for that we'll be sure to get accurate information.
>> do we want to try to cover other parts of it or one at a time?
why don't we -- let's just have one motion that covers as many parts.
>> I move that we do number 2, set up temporary operations for rebuilding permits.
I move that we waive permit fees for those identified as part of the disaster --
>> let's bring that back with the legal opinion next week, but indicate our intention to do that.
>> I have a question as to whether insurance covers these fiesta for rebuilding because I think that they may.
>> I'm going to skip over and come back to the ones that I think we need additional information on.
I would go to number 6, that we develop resource fact sheets for recovery related assistance provided by fema, Travis County health and human services, volunteer organizations, Travis County t.n.r., disaster organizations, et cetera.
some of those already exist but that we pull together a full compliment of fact sheets.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> ...
to provide information such as -- the wild land fire information for guide lines on preventive measures for avoiding fire damage and predisaster planning.
I don't know if there's a funding associated, costs associated with us printing those.
but I do know that -- that the emergency services district generally have been responsible for their own printing and dissemination of these materials related to wildfires.
and they are -- their budgets are -- at least some of them are extremely stressed right now with their own firefighting needs.
so if the county can step in and help with the printing of these materials to be disseminated, I think that we should consider that and perhaps we need to come back with associated costs on that.
>> the good question there is what materials already exist.
>> yeah.
>> and we need to know that and if we need to -- to augment it, fine.
if we just -- if we simply need to print more copies of it --
>> that's basically it.
there are several brochures.
fire-wise brochure, maybe we should authorize that right now.
they are available in electronic format, but everybody is having to print their own for dissemination.
>> those are state documents?
>> they are
>> [indiscernible] service.
>> if we call them and say we need 5,000 copies of this, will they say I will have to it to you --
>> I can make a phone call and find out.
>> find that out for us.
I'm totally in favor of printing services at no charge.
we do need to be clear for whom, from what funding source, how long, what kind of information.
I would blanche at the idea of picking up the tab for the state in printing state materials.
maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't.
>> some of those documents are provided by the international association of fire chiefs and one of the deputy marshal's yesterday was checking to see if we can get that 12 pages ready, set go brochure preprinted from them.
hopefully we will know that today.
if not, we are already planning to meet with a number of neighborhood groups and we are -- we are printing in -- in trying to figure out how many people are going to be there, if we're going to plan to have that many available printed through our office.
for those meetings that are coming up in the -- in the near future.
>> perhaps we can come back next week with a recommendation on what we need there.
part of the problem is that -- is that it may be available over the long haul.
from the state or -- or some other source, but we need it now.
they are available in electronic format.
it's one of the things that we were talking about yesterday, we wished that we could get a bunch printed for national night out tomorrow night.
it's almost impossible to get the volume in that amount of time that we need.
it's just not available.
>> that I'm totally in favor of.
I just, you know, my previous incarnation is kicking in.
I'm --
>> we have to draw some parameters.
>> anything else?
>> I -- I move that we authorize the t.n.r.
to look at a limited hazardous materials collection and disposal event and assess the feasibility of that and bring it back to court.
>> let me say this.
I don't want this to appear this is falling all in the lap of t.n.r.
of course t.n.r.
is bringing this to us today, if you look at it it's emergency services that will are is the one that -- take deal with the fires.
t.n.r.
has done an outstanding job, I think, on providing a lot of assistance, along with so many others out there in the community.
but when you -- when you are dealing directly with those fires, those -- that emergency service operation, danny hobby, that group, have -- have done a significant job, along with everybody.
I think everybody has done a great job.
so I hear these recommendations but it appears to me that t.n.r.
is one facet of it.
we have two separate departments, transportation natural resources and emergency services.
of course that department is hopefully intertwined in this.
even if we refer to as office the emergency management, really danny hobby and that grown and of course coordinating with all of the esd's, all of that, group, need to have an equal setting because they are involved directly.
I didn't want this to all come up under t.n.r.
>> I agree with you.
I'm glad that you brought that up.
I think what we have here is major disasters that we're dealing with.
the new to the county.
we can't assess our own disaster planning until we have one like we've had and that's where we are.
and I think that we're looking at efforts in disaster response, both on the firefighting and disaster -- addressing the disaster side and the victim response side.
in a go multi-departmental in the county.
so I'm -- I'm -- my own observation, correct me if I'm wrong, but our emergency services side and danny hobby side is -- is fully involved and their plate is more than full.
and so I believe because it's multi-departmental, that it's highly appropriate in this disaster situation to -- to include particularly t.n.r.
because of areas that -- of expertise that they bring to the table.
so I would really like to see steve manila and pete baldwin work together closely on following through on these plans and developing the details out because I believe, peat, you probably need help.
and herschel, you may, I don't know.
I've been very closely working with pete and danny, they've been working almost 24/7 since the fires started.
>> second the motion.
did you get all of that, ms. Slade?
>> is it time for discussion?
>> more discussion that there's one more point.
>> I would like to include that to make sure that this particular -- when it actually gets, have acquired all of these on the legal side, because we have legal issue that's we haven't resolved, but sooner or later we'll fine tune those to where we may can include some of this, in these particular recommendations that we're about to vote on.
I want to make sure that I mentioned Pflugerville, but of course we have something, a little incidents, fire flare-up down in precinct 4, burleson road, somewhere in that area, it should be county-wide.
the question is how do we make that these particular recommendations we are dealing with get to those persons throughout the county to let them know that we are doing what we're doing here today.
I'm just kind of concerned about getting the word out, judge.
how do we get it out.
>> there are three more points, that's one of them, I think.
>> pardon me.
>> that I wanted to include in this motion.
>> one is that we direct staff to explore the risk assessment study and consider bringing the proposal back to the court.
that we develop the fact sheet of the management on bcp, that the -- we develop with the community what our fire plans and efforts are, and that we support fire service provider initiatives to educate the public and prevent fires, create or improve firefighting buffers, improve communications including reverse 911 evacuation planning along the lines of what we were taking a look at evacuation routes things like that.
and that we direct staff to explore and bring back to the court a public information officer position as a whole.
is that friendly?
>> the second does cover all of that?
can you all get all of this done by next Tuesday?
>> no.
you must prioritize.
>> Commissioner Eckhardt.
>> I'm just wondering, I'm absolutely 100% behind this motion.
are we going to bring back pieces of this as we move along because this -- we are -- we are in a reactive mode to a disaster that has occurred and that we are concerned that we are under a continuing -- we are still in fire weather.
so I want to -- to make sure that this isn't the last time that we touch this motion, that we'll be bringing pieces of it back and working the plan because like I said before, I think we've got immediate responses to consider.
most of which are covered by -- most of which describe what's in this motion, but then we also have some long-term preparation to consider, also several points in the motion go to that.
>> I would suggest that we is it steve and pete to prioritize this list, go ahead and start acting on what they consider the most important priorities and bring back to court next week their time -- a time planning as far as the priorities implementation.
>> plus I guess if we get to legal, whatever legal questions we want to address next week, we can.
in my view the biggest question for us is how do we go about learning the identity of residents who have been adversely impacted by these wildfires.
>> exactly.
>> and how do we get them to contact us and let us know how we can assist?
and if you have -- if you have insurance, you may not need our help.
you may just need us to stay out of the way.
if you don't have insurance, my guess is that your need may well be greater.
but at some point it seems to me if you don't have insurance, still need help, we ought to get out the word to contact steve and pete so they can communicate with Travis County officials and managers and we can provide whatever help we can.
I feel a bit uneasy kind of taking over meetings at the church.
I'm sure the church already has an agenda.
but I don't have any problem with letting church officials know that Travis County would like to know what Travis County residents have -- have received fire damage, and they need Travis County's assistance to deal with them.
if there's a way for us to get that out in an organized manner, fine.
if church representatives were to invite us, then I think we ought to go.
the question would be individually, you know, what damages you suffer, what's your situation today, how would you like for Travis County to assist you, and then we can try to figure out whether we can.
in the end, that's what it boils down to.
on the other hand, I guess we may as well go ahead and beef up our anticipated response for similar incidents in the future.
>> uh-huh.
>> that's what I'm hearing, right?
>> right.
anything else today?
thank you all very much for coming down.
>> thank you.
>> appreciate it.
all in favor of the motion?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank y'all.
>> thank you.
>> I will have the same wording back on the agenda next week, if better wording or different wording is requested, let me know by noon tomorrow and we'll get it on.
by the way, item 15 we will take into executive session.
I have a couple of legal questions about that contract.
and that's the matter involving the invoice for legal services.
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