Marin supervisors approve emergency declaration over flooding

Marin County supervisors voted Tuesday to ratify a local emergency proclamation over the widespread flooding early this month.

“The proclamation provides for and preserves eligibility for state and federal funding and supports our ongoing recovery, reimbursement and mitigation efforts,” County Executive Derek Johnson told supervisors during their first meeting of the year.

Johnson said the county is still assessing the cost of the damage in the unincorporated areas, but the preliminary estimate is about $3.5 million.

“Our major cost drivers are impacts to levees, roads and bridges as well as damage to park and recreation facilities,” Johnson said.

The estimate excludes damage to state infrastructure, said Steven Torrence, the county’s emergency management director.

“We are aware that there are impacts to Caltrans and California Highway Patrol facilities, but we cannot take that into consideration for the county’s disaster declaration,” Torrence said.

Torrence said he expects to return to the Board of Supervisors in about 60 days with a more complete assessment of damage countywide.

If the Federal Emergency Management Agency denies the county’s request for financial aid, Torrence said, “we also have a secondary road to work with the state of California.”

Torrence said many members of the community want to know how the county can improve its system for issuing storm warnings. Johnson said it is important to recognize that the flooding was caused by a combination of king tides, strong winds and heavy rain.

“We will look at our public-facing communications,” Johnson said, “specifically conversations with our partners at the National Weather Service about why the actual tides exceeded all forecasts.”

Marin County Fire Chief Jason Weber said he has been meeting with AT&T about the widespread communications failures in Marin during the storms on Jan. 4.

“We experienced a telecommunications outage across the county that had profound effects, including disruption of our 911 service,” Weber said. “We were always led to believe that the redundancy in the system would reroute phone calls, but unfortunately what we learned that night was that people were unable to make or receive calls, which included accessing 911 services.”

Weber said the outage was caused by flooding at an AT&T building in San Rafael. He said that given the county’s reliance on all forms of telecommunications, it was unacceptable for the system to depend on one central office.

“We will continue to hold AT&T accountable to ensure that they make the investments necessary so we have redundancy in our system,” he said.

During the public comment period of the meeting, advocates for homeless people faulted officials for not opening the county’s severe weather emergency shelter during the storm.

One advocate, Jason Sarris, noted that the county allocates $160,000 a year to operate the shelter, but enforces strict criteria before opening it and spending the money. The emergency shelter opened just twice in the 2024-25 fiscal year.

The program is triggered if temperatures are forecast to drop below an average nighttime low of 36 degrees and conditions are projected to persist for at least three days, or temperatures are forecast to drop below an average nighttime low of 45 degrees over two days in combination with either 1 inch of rain each night or hazardous conditions such as high winds.

“Homeless advocates got so many calls,” Sarris said. “We went through so many blankets, so many clothes. People were soaked.”

He said one 73-year-old woman with intensive needs had her tent flattened by the wind.

“We had to buy a new tent and do an emergency setup in the pouring rain,” Sarris said. “After the storm, she had a stroke.”

County officials made no comment about the severe weather emergency shelter during the meeting.