EVACUATION ZONE MAP UPDATED FOR 2023

SIMPLER MAP HAS 13 ZONES INSTEAD OF 41, NO LETTERS

By Christian Kallen

Kelsey Carreiro, the City of Healdsburg’s emergency manager, previewed a new evacuation zone map to the city council at their Monday meeting, May 1.

The update consolidated the previous 41 evacuation zones to a more manageable 13, and dispenses with the letter system formerly appended to each number (e.g., zone HE-17 a, b, c or d). “Now, all evacuation zones will have the HEdesignator at the beginning to signify the City of Healdsburg (versus the surrounding county zones), followed by a number, 1 through 13,” Carreiro told the council.

Also, the color of the evacuation zones was changed, based on community feedback, to make it clearer and easier to read. The border lines were changed to thick black lines instead of colored lines, as they were previously.

The Healdsburg Evacuation Map, found online at healdsburgemergency.org, also serves as an interactive map where users are able to click on zones to read their boundaries in both English and Spanish. Additionally, the map features an address lookup tool so community members can search for their home or work address to determine which zone they are in.

During an emergency, the map will be updated to show which zones are under an evacuation order or evacuation warning.

Councilmember Ron Edwards asked if it were necessary to register one’s zone with Nixle or another app so the cell phone user would be alerted to emergency orders pertaining to their address.

“You don’t need to do anything to register it. If there is something specific to a zone, like there’s a fire and we're going to evacuate an entire zone, we will do a WEA (wireless emergency alert), which goes off your location,” said Carreiro. “So it will get everyone notice within that zone.”

On Saturday, May 6, the Healdsburg Fire and Emergency Preparedness Expo will give people in the Northern Sonoma County area the opportunity to attend workshops

in English and Spanish, learn how to protect home and pets during emergencies, see the Henry 1 helicopter in action and more. It runs from 10am to 3pm at the Healdsburg Community Center.