Oct 21, 2007 7:34 pm US/Pacific
Topanga Canyon Residents Must Be Ready To Evacuate
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ―
The Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness warned residents in Topanga Canyon Sunday to be prepared to evacuate as the 1,000-acre wildfire in nearby Malibu continued to burn.
As firefighters struggled to halt the destructive blaze in the beachside town, members of T-CEP, a nonprofit volunteer emergency preparedness group established in 1993 in the wake of a wildfire that ravaged the area, opened its phone hotlines and begin posting information on its Web site at www.t-cep.org.
"We're telling people you should be prepared to evacuate," Pat MacNeil, manager and chair of T-CEP, said. "You should be putting stuff behind the front door, turning your car around and making sure there's gas in your car, common-sense things."
The group opened its Emergency Operations Center at 6 a.m. with nearly 20 volunteers gathering at its temporary headquarters at a local restaurant in Old Topanga Canyon. Volunteers were manning a communications hub to get up-to-date information to local residents and businesses as well as track any voluntary and mandatory evacuations for the area.
MacNeil, who has lived in the area for 28 years, said new residents were particularly anxious as they watched the heavy smoke clearly visible from nearby Malibu.
"We're watching the eastern side of the fire very closely because we're on the eastern side of Malibu," she said. "The fire is so sporadic we can't take any chances. You never know when the wind will shift or what will happen."
T-CEP holds regular disaster drills and distributes a survival guide to the community that outlines an evacuation plan in the event of a wildfire, earthquake or other emergency.
T-CEP will remain activated until the fire is officially declared over, MacNeil said.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
