District 2 Dispatchers Erin Titus, Karen Law, and Lane Closure System Coordinator Kristen Begrin created a makeshift communication system during the Redding office evacuation during the Carr fire. Photo by District 2
District 2 Public Information Officer
On the evening of July 26, Caltrans District 2 employees were forced into a difficult situation. As the Carr Fire forced its way into west Redding, neighborhoods began to burn and the lights began to go out. Approximately 40,000 residents were forced to evacuate with little to no lead time. Personnel were faced with a difficult dilemma: How to disseminate information to the public while dealing with the situation firsthand.
When the Redding office lost power that evening, members of the Traffic Management Center had to come up with a solution quickly. Kristen Begrin, Lane Closure System Coordinator for District 2, traveled to the Red Bluff Maintenance Yard to set up a makeshift Dispatch and Traffic Management Center as the usual digs lay in the darkness, within a mile of the blaze. With assistance from Dispatchers Erin Titus and Karen Law, Begrin took two laptops and cell phones to the Red Bluff yard, using cell phone hot spots for Internet access. To pass and receive information to and from Maintenance units in the field, a hand-held radio was held close to an open window to hit the repeater. Begrin and crew then funneled those messages to Caltrans public information officers, who pushed the information out to the public. Joe Baltazar, acting Supervisor of the Traffic Management Center, was able to relieve Begrin the next morning and Mike Conner, a member of the Emergency Operations Center, managed to reroute phone calls from the district office and send them to Red Bluff.
With so many people affected in the area, whether losing their homes, being evacuated, or helping friends and family who were evacuated, the situation was truly "next person up." Many of the District 2 Emergency Operations personnel were in this boat too, forced to deal with getting themselves and their families safe as the wall of fire took direct aim at the western portion of the city. Begrin and members of the Traffic Management Center, along with the tireless efforts of Maintenance personnel in the field, found a way to get the information across however they could, so Caltrans information officers could notify the public.