A few months earlier there was a fire several miles to the northeast of the Oaks in Griffith Park.  The fire did significant damage to the park.  Residents were evacuated to John Marshall High School in Los Feliz neighborhood.  This fire led to the "evacuation drill" of The Oaks. 

The Oaks features small windy dead-end streets off of Beachwood Canyon.  These streets are often too narrow for two wide cars, let alone today's big wide fire engines.  When there is high fire danger, hillside neighborhoods with narrow streets such as The Oaks are placed on "Red Flag Day" status.  The neighbors are prohibited from parking on the street.  The Oaks seemed like a good choice to hold an "evacuation drill." 

I had a choice to sign-up for this drill with either CERT or Red Cross.  I chose the later in order to get more sheltering experience.  I made the correct choice for my CERT friends were assigned duties such as parking lot attendant and manning a traffic barricade.  While this is work that needs to be done.  As a neighborhood leader, I must ask, how does this work train neighbors?  LAFD solicited us to take their CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) course based on the scenario that in a major disaster LAFD, LAPD, EMS will be overwhelmed and unable to respond to our neighborhood emergencies.  In earnest many of my neighbors and I took this course.  I even helped promote this program.  We were taught useful skills such as preparedness, light fire suppression, light search and rescue, disaster psychology, and team organization.  We need practice in these skills for as we were taught "use it or lose it."  Being a parking lot attendant or manning a traffic barricade is obviously not related to skill we were taught.  It does not help our neighborhoods train to be self-sufficient.  Unfortunately task such as a parking lot attendant or manning a traffic barricade, as well as fire house security during election day are more typical than situations in which CERTs can use their skills.  My CERT friends told me they regretted participating in this "evacuation drill"; saying it was a waste of time. 

Red Cross did not get assigned tasks until about a week before the drill.  Red Cross volunteers only heard on the Tuesday or Wednesday before the drill what our role would be.  We were told we would not set-up a full shelter but would instead practice shelter registration, sign the evacuees in, as if there really was a shelter.  We would also set up a canteen and feed the evacuees snacks; as well as pass out preparedness literature and recruit volunteers for Red Cross.  I was willing to settle for signing people into a mock shelter.  I signed up for this task. 

When Red Cross arrived, we were told we could not sign people in or even feed evacuees snacks.  There apparently was a controversy with a religious group who had volunteered wanting to sign people in.  Since this group proselytes, I would not have been willing to sign in and let them have my private information.  They were assigned food duties.  While they did this well, this is not a disaster function of their church.  There are nonprofits such as Red Cross who specialize in mass feeding.  Red Cross even has specially designed trucks and equipment for mass feeding.  My fellow volunteers and I need training to maintain proficiency. 

All we got to do was pass out literature.  The "evacuation drill" had turned into a disaster preparedness fair.  Fairs certainly are useful if the public turns out and gets educated about preparedness.  The LA Times reported 40 evacuees.  My friends and I who actually worked the event saw no more than a handful of evacuees.  What we had was a disaster preparedness fair in which the people staffing the booths outnumbered the attendees.  What the "drill" turned into was the people manning booth visiting with one another since there were few members of the public to educate. 

As I left at 12:30pm, the event ended at noon, I met an Oaks resident who told me she was given a flyer which said the drill started at noon.  I was told by a neighborhood council official that LAFD had distributed maps with the wrong street names on them. 

I was later told by a participant who went to the CERT Battalion planning meeting, that they said the "drill" had turned into public relations event for the Mayor.  I was also told that the Mayor picked July 28, 2007 as the date for the drill.  The City Councilman for this area, Tom La Bonge, was out of the country and had requested a date in which he could be there.  The Mayor reportedly refused to accommodate Councilman La Bonge.  As it turned out, the Mayor did not attend.  The word around the "drill" was that he was taking his kids camping.  The Mayor for weeks was dogged by scandal.  He admitted publicly he was having an extramarital relationship with a TV reporter.  The reporter was later disciplined as were 3 levels of managers and executives above her.  We had our time wasted for what apparently was to have been a photo op for the Mayor.  Valuable training time and goodwill was squandered. 

On August 14, 2007, Tuesday, there was another fire at Griffith Park, near the Observatory (LA Times, Aug. 15, 2007:B1, B3).  Since the five acre fire occurred during the work day the Observatory was opened, officials there evacuated.  Had the fire gotten bigger, there is question as to whether the neighbors and volunteers from CERT, Red Cross, and so on would have been prepared, since only a few weeks earlier their preparedness drill was politicized and a wasted opportunity.