Mapping Trinity County Evacuation Zones

Know Your Evacuation Zone &
View Current Evacuation Status in Trinity County

The Trinity County Fire Safe Council, in collaboration with the Trinity County Sheriff’s Department, developed the Trinity County evacuation zone boundaries which TCRCD GIS Program Manager Denise Wesley digitized. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was used to map the evacuation zone boundaries along with hydrologic & topographic features, residential & commercial structure locations, roads, wilderness, and land ownership boundaries.

Over a series of meetings with TCRCD staff and the Trinity County Sheriff’s Department, 387 zones were defined throughout the County. This process involved reviewing paper and digital maps for each community using aerial imagery, and identifying boundary locations which were then digitized into an online mapping system.

The process was long and thorough, taking into account many different factors. We asked critical questions about how residents accessed roads and routes of escape. We looked at population density and made determinations about the size of an evacuation boundary in relation to the number of residents living in or potentially recreating in an area. We took care to lump neighborhoods together in one zone when manageable or split them if necessary, while attempting to eliminate possible sources of boundary confusion.

These zones were loaded into Code Red, the online emergency alerts platform that Trinity County uses. The zones are used in a statewide map used by the California Office of Emergency Services. This data also helps local fire and emergency management personnel to notify the public of their evacuation status. Brochures were made for each zone and disseminated to the public in the mail. If you would like a copy of an Evacuation Zone brochure, with pertinent information in case you need to evacuate your home, please check with your local Volunteer Fire Department or contact the TCRCD: info@tcrcd.net.

The Know Your Zone mapping application was built to help Trinity County residents find the zone they live in and view their evacuation status. In the application, you can simply browse the map or use the search tool to find your zone based on your address. This mapping application can be found online at trinitycounty.org/OES

Work continues to create recommended evacuation routes for each zone. Stay tuned!