Each year in California, wildland and vegetation fires destroy thousands of acres and hundreds of homes. The 2020 CZU Lightning Complex wildfires destroyed roughly 1,000 homes in Santa Cruz County, and required the emergency evacuation of campus.
The potential for a wildfire on our campus remains, our region continues to experience severe drought conditions, and much of the vegetation on our campus and in parts of the Santa Cruz Mountains remains dangerously dry.
The best way to confront this uncertainty is through preparation, and we need your help with that. The Office of Emergency Management is partnering with our campus Institutional Research, Assessment, and Policy Studies to gather information for planning purposes related to the evacuation needs of our campus community.
An evacuation-information form has been developed to help us with this information gathering. You can find the form here. This will also be emailed to faculty, staff, and students later this month.
Questions on the form range from where you generally work or study (Main Residential Campus, Coastal Science Campus, Scotts Valley Center,, etc.), how you would leave during an evacuation, and whether you might need transportation assistance if an emergency evacuation were ordered. All information gathered will inform our emergency planning — how many buses or hotel rooms would be needed, for example.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation. The more participation we have, the better prepared we will be. Questions about the form can be directed to oes@ucsc.edu.
