In a move expected to make it safer and easier for 30,000-plus Ramona residents to evacuate during emergencies, County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to work out an agreement with Ramona’s water agency to use land for a new evacuation route.
“This action will save lives, and provides the people of Ramona another option in the event there is a need for people to evacuate,” said Supervisor Dianne Jacob, whose second district includes Ramona.
With just one wide-laned “urban” road, Highway 67, leading out of their rural community, thousands of Ramona residents faced nerve-wracking and potentially dangerous evacuations during the County’s massive firestorms in 2003 and 2007.
Some residents reported being in gridlock for up to five hours as they funneled together in the middle of town to access Highway 67 during the 2007 evacuation — a traffic jam that could have been disastrous if fires burned toward the highway.
The Ramona Municipal Water District, the County, San Diego Gas & Electric, CALFIRE and the Ramona Community Sponsor Group — the community’s planning advisory group to the County — have been working on the new evacuation route plan.
The new route is a 12-foot-wide, half-mile long, hard-pack dirt road on property owned by the water district. Under the proposed plan, the route would only be open during evacuations; SDG&E would put lighting along its path; and the County, Jacob said, would provide liability insurance to the water agency.
Ramona planning group chairman Jim Piva said the new route would help ease gridlock during an evacuation. People in north Ramona could avoid funneling into town and instead, connect with Highland Valley Road, Archie Moore Road and eventually, Highway 67 further south of Ramona. They could also continue west on Highland Valley Road toward Interstate 15, he said.
Either way would help avoid creating bottlenecks for evacuating residents, Piva said.
Ramona Community Protection and Evacuation Plan (PDF)
