Ahead of what could be a busy wildfire season, Kitsap County announced Thursday that it has joined six other Western Washington counties in adopting a regional evacuation alert system.
The Ready, Set, Go program creates a standardized three-step evacuation messaging system for most counties bordering Puget Sound, including Kitsap, King, Pierce, Skagit, Thurston, Snohomish and Whatcom. Emergency Management officials are hoping the unified system will help create a more informed public.
“With the threat [of wildfires] increasing, we wanted to use, across the region, a standard platform for communicating that could be easily understood,” said David Rasmussen, a spokesperson for the Kitsap County Emergency Management Department.
The evacuation program launched last year as an effort to standardize emergency evacuation across four counties. Kitsap, Skagit and Whatcom joined the partnership this year.
The evacuation system can be employed for a variety of emergencies, Rasmussen said, but the catalyst for Kitsap’s participation is a united wildfire response.
Under the program, residents will generally get two alerts before an evacuation call. An initial "ready" notification will alert the community of possible danger in the area, asking them to begin preparing for an evacuation.
A "Set" notification could follow, telling residents a short notice evacuation is likely. Then the "Go" notification would tell residents to immediately evacuate. If conditions change quickly, the "Set" step may be skipped.
Notifications will be sent through the Kitsap County alert system, NOAA weather radios, and social media. Residents are encouraged to sign up for the county’s alert system at: kcowa.us/alert.
The system is yet another result of the growing wildfire risk west of the Cascades.
The West Sound remains at a low risk of wildfire, but the Western Washington region is expected to see “above normal” wildfire potential throughout much of the summer, according to a June outlook report from the National Interagency Coordination Center.
Conditions this summer are expected to be drier than normal. The Washington Department of Ecology declared a drought in April, citing low snowpack and a dry spring.
Michele Laboda, a spokesperson for North Kitsap Fire and Rescue, said wildfire risk is weather dependent, and thus hard to predict. “However, we know there is a pre-existing lack of snowpack in the Olympic Mountains and that’s typical when we experience dryer conditions,” she said.
The most common cause of brush fires in Kitsap are escaped, human ignited fires, Laboda said.
“We urge the public to watch the fire danger conditions locally and to be as careful as possible all the time, but especially in dryer conditions,” she said.
Last summer, Pierce County experienced several wildfires, including one that resulted in the deaths of two people, said Jody Fuerguson, director of the county’s emergency management department.
“With wildfires becoming more common near urban areas in Western Washington, the 'Ready, Set, Go!' approach to evacuation is critical for all of us to learn, understand and follow when instructed to do so,” she said in a press release.
Conor Wilson is a Murrow News fellow, reporting for the Kitsap Sun and Gig Harbor Now, a nonprofit newsroom based in Gig Harbor, through a program managed by Washington State University.
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