Below is the City of Agoura Hills’ Evacuation Plan (EP).  The EP has been prepared to assist the City and public safety agencies with effective communication, and provide the general public with information on how the City would be evacuated in a time of emergency.

The EP has been reviewed and approved by the Public Safety Agencies (Fire and Sheriff).  It should be noted the EP is a dynamic and flexible document that will be adjusted based on the circumstances of the emergency and decisions made by the public safety agency incident commander(s).

 Agoura Hills Evacuation Pl

Los Angeles County’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), Fire Department and Sheriff’s Department have worked collaboratively with cities and community members to develop emergency evacuation zones over the last several months. The final map is primarily based on direct input from first responder agencies (Fire & Law). The zones within the Santa Monica Mountains are not a stand-alone venture and are just one piece of a larger coordinated effort – they will eventually be part of a continuous emergency evacuation zone map encompassing all of Los Angeles County.

OEM contracted with a company called “Zonehaven” to host this zone map on their interactive platform. The company was not involved in deciding the zone boundaries – they were initially determined by the LA County public safety agencies and were then reviewed by city staff and community members before being shared with the public.

“Zonehaven AWARE” (community.zonehaven.com) is the public facing website where residents can find out which zone they live in and view real-time information about their zone’s evacuation status during an incident. Zone status will also be mirrored on the County’s emergency website (lacounty.gov/emergency) along with additional incident specific response and recovery information

Evacuation orders are life-and-death decisions made in the field during an emergency incident, so the zones are first and foremost designed to be an effective tool for the Fire Department and Law Enforcement to use. Therefore, the zone boundaries were determined with tactical and geographic considerations in mind, as well as major roads and ingress/egress routes. They are not based on individual neighborhoods or HOA boundaries.

 During a large-scale incident that requires evacuations, the Incident Commanders (Fire & Law) will be responsible for issuing and enforcing evacuation orders/warnings. A major strong point of Zonehaven is that it helps first responders more quickly and accurately target an area for evacuations, saving valuable time and allowing the community to be notified sooner.

Since there will eventually be many zones across the county (not just within the Santa Monica Mountains); the zones need to be labeled with a unique identifier. These identifiers allow residents to “Know their Zone” and determine what protective action is being called for where they currently are, and do not necessarily need to mean anything beyond that. The zone identifiers within the Santa Monica Mountains region designate general geographic location, show whether the zone is in a city or unincorporated area, and follow a continuous number system.

For example:

AGO-C301--308 = Agoura Hills

TOP-U001 = Topanga Canyon – Unincorporated – 001

LEO-U015 = Leo Carrillo – Unincorporated – 015

HID-C501 = Hidden Hills – City – 501 *

A complete list of zone identifiers in the Santa Monica Mountains region is attached

Predesignated evacuation zones will be invaluable to public safety agencies during a rapidly expanding incident. They will enable initial attack incident commanders to quickly determine boundaries for evacuation orders/warnings, so they do not need to develop boundaries from scratch when time is of the essence. The zone map also allows for consistency in training and preparedness efforts.

The zones are designed to be functional and effective emergency evacuation zones, which have the added benefit of giving all responding public safety agencies, mutual aid resources, and cooperators a single reference point. Assisting agencies may be responding from out of the area, and this zone map will provide them a common operating platform and a clear understanding of the geographic areas that are under evacuation orders.