Floods exposed weaknesses in California prisons’ emergency plans — but they still aren’t ready

FILE Growing Tulare Lake cuts off th Avenue south of Corcoran in Kings County Courtesy DWR In amid record-breaking rain and snow two prisons in the southern San Joaquin Valley faced a serious menace of flooding But neither prison California State Prison Corcoran or the Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Facility had a robust evacuation plan on hand and ready for the looming catastrophe Instead the prisons developed a joint plan to transfer roughly incarcerated people to other state prisons within to days or longer Wheelchair-bound individuals the plan stated would take six days to evacuate And department buses intended to shuttle people to safety could take up to a day to arrive The floods that year ultimately did not reach the prisons but the threat they posed illustrated how California s -prisoner corrections system has failed to prepare for natural disasters That s according to a overview issued this month by an independent agency that oversees the department s disciplinary process and internal investigations While California s prisons are vulnerable to wildfires floods and earthquakes we discovered they are not adequately prepared to respond to emergencies posed by natural disasters stated the record by the Office of Inspector General which reviewed urgency plans for state prisons after fielding concerns about the department s catastrophe response The document detailed deep fractures in the department s urgency preparedness including issues of transportation varied exposure assessment methodologies lacking mutual aid agreements timely evacuations and prison overcrowding As of December California s prison system was operating at roughly or people over its designed limit according to the description Not only are selected prisons overcrowded but the department is unable to evacuate the incarcerated population and staff at the bulk prisons within the first critical hours of an exigency the review noted Without the ability to hurriedly evacuate prisons it is likely that wildfires floods and earthquakes will consequence in loss of life within the incarcerated population Notably the inspector general unveiled that none of the prisons included a plan to evacuate incarcerated people outside their gates but rather focused on moving the incarcerated population to and from locations within the prison The assessment concluded with a list of recommendations including ones that would bring the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation into compliance with California regulations around crisis planning Carlee Purdum an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Houston who researches how disasters impact incarcerated people declared the description is a first step in identifying more materials to patronage prisons and corrections agencies as they plan and prepare I ve never seen anything like this before Purdum noted Prisons and corrections agencies are very marginalized and isolated in the urgency and calamity planning space The important takeaway should be that we have not engaged in these kinds of discussions and put forth the kind of state level information and accountability into these institutions Advocates for years have been sounding the alarm over the procedures in which California prisons are ill-equipped to confront setting hazards due to issues such as overcrowding and aging infrastructure A analysis by the UCLA Luskin School of Constituents Affairs and the nonprofit organization Ella Baker Center for Human Rights chronicled those concerns and urged the state to implement safeguards People inside have a fear that the actual plan is to abandon them in the matter of an exigency It is deeply troubling mentioned James King director of programs for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights In these community wellbeing crises it s not just going to affect the people in the prisons either incarcerated there or working there It s going to impact the entire county the entire public Trucks driving through the flooded intersection on Highway near Corcoran on March The flood was caused by rising water levels on the Tule River after a series of storms Photo by Larry Valenzuela CalMatters CatchLight Local Those concerns were echoed by Dax Proctor statewide coordinator for Californians United for a Responsible Budget a statewide coalition of organizations that view weather hazards as a key reason to close prisons The number one response to address these issues at hand is to reduce the number of people locked up in California prisons as rapidly as attainable Proctor announced A good starting place would be those bulk vulnerable to weather hazards Bureaucrats from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the California Governor s Office of Crisis Services answered questions about the document before lawmakers at a hearing Thursday They assured lawmakers that the department would not work alone in a large-scale emergency California has a vast amount of guidance and we would rely heavily on our federal state and local partners to assist us with the evacuation of an entire prison stated Melissa Prill special agent-in-charge at the corrections department s Office of Correctional Safety But Sen Laura Richardson a Democrat from Inglewood stated that in an unpredictable situation those partners may be busy assisting other people To assume that these other agencies are going to be available to help you or to help us in a prison climate is not something going forward we have the freedom to assume Richardson revealed I would give this office of inspector general s review of your organization I would consider it an F frankly Sen Kelly Seyarto a Republican from Murrieta stated he wasn t extremely critically concerned I think we re getting a little overboard in terms of thinking that we are going to have to evacuate entire prisons Seyarto disclosed It s just not a practical thing to think that somehow the whole prison is going to catch on fire In a report to CalMatters department spokesperson Mary Xjimenez stated prisons take an all-hazards approach to emergency planning and that it coordinates its plans with the Governor s Office of Exigency Services The department follows the FEMA National Case Management System which is the national doctrine that provides all federal state and local response agencies with a consistent set of principles management structures and a systematic approach to urgency response King disclosed the department has a history of being unprepared for weather hazards and instead reacts to them once they inevitably occur These are just facts King stated The department could accept these facts and do something about them or they could try to manage their response to the record Disappointedly it seems like they ve chosen the latter This is an opportunity to improve their response to see the gaps and to create plans that address the gaps Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow CalMatters is a population interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California s state Capitol works and why it matters