California WildFires Continue But Containment Levels On The Rise

ContactRelief Recommendations for Contact Centers

ContactRelief is making public its recommendations made to ContactRelief subscribers, Friday, December 8th, 2017.

ContactRelief recommends continued suspension of contact with consumers in certain California zip codes affected by the Creek, Liberty, Lilac, Rye, Thomas, and Skirball fires until further notice. To obtain the list of the affected zip codes, become a ContactRelief subscriber.

New Fires In San Diego While Firefighters Progress In Fire Containment

New fires erupted Thursday, December 7th, 2017 near San Diego, California adding to an already disastrous 2017 fire season for Californians. In addition to expanding the coverage area for some of the existing files, ContactRelief responded by issuing contact suspension recommendations for the Lilac and Liberty fires and expanding the coverage areas in the Rye fire. On Friday, December 8th, 2017, we maintained our existing recommendations but saw progress as firefighters have increased containment levels in most of the active fire regions.

Winds Friday night were lighter than the 50+ mph Santa Ana winds that drove much of this week's rapid fire expansion. This was welcome news to the thousands of firefighters battling the infernos. However, dry conditions are expected to persist through next week making the efforts to extinguish the fires more difficult and raising the possibility of new fires erupting across the region.

Evacuations were lifted in the Creek and Liberty fires as containment reached 70% and 60% respectively. The major evacuations in the Thomas fire were also lifted in spite of only 10% containment. Evacuations were reduced from mandatory evacuations to an evacuation warnings in the Lilac and Rye Fires. We will continue to assess the situation and will make additional recommendations as warranted later tonight.

Fire Updates

Creek Fire in Los Angeles County

• Acres burned: 15,619
• Containment: 70%
• Structures destroyed: 105
• Structures damaged: 70
• Structures threatened: 2,500
• Personnel on site: 2,295
• 70% contained - full containment expected date: 12/23/17
• Evacuations lifted - Residents allowed to return
• CAL FIRE Incident Update

Liberty Fire in Riverside County

• Acres burned: 300
• Containment: 60%
• Structures destroyed: 2
• Evacuations Lifted

Lilac Fire in San Diego County

• Acres burned: 4,100
• Containment: 0%
• Structures destroyed: 65
• Personnel on site: 1,000
• Evacuations reduced to Evacuation Warnings
• CAL FIRE Incident Update

Rye Fire in Los Angeles County

• Acres burned: 6,049
• Containment: 50%
• Structures destroyed: 1
• Structures threatened: 5,460
• Personnel on site: 901
• 35% contained - full containment date expected 12/15/17
• Evacuations reduced to Evacuation Warnings
• CAL FIRE Incident Update

Skirball Fire in Los Angeles County

• Acres burned: 475
• Containment: 50%
• Structures destroyed: 6
• Structures damaged: 12
• Evacuations to zip code 90049 remain in effect but residents in 90077 may return
• Los Angeles Fire Department Update

Thomas Fire in Ventura County

• Acres burned: 132,000
• Containment: 10% - Full containment date unknown
• Structures destroyed: 401
• Structures damaged: 81
• Structures threatened: 15,000
• Personnel on site: 3,216
• Evacuations lifted for Ventura and Santa Paula
• CAL FIRE Incident Update

Why You Must Also Prepare for Man-Made Disasters - The Las Vegas Mass Shooting

Contact centers need to be prepared to act quickly and decisively not only for forecasted events like hurricanes, but also for man-made disasters that cannot be predicted. On October 1st, in Las Vegas, over 50 people were killed and over 500 injured in a senseless mass shooting at a local music festival.

ContactRelief issued a recommendation to suspend contact to accounts with zip codes surrounding the Las Vegas Strip on October 2nd at 12:30 AM PDT, a little more than 2 hours after the incident began, and expanded this contact suspension recommendation at 4:30 AM PDT to include all of the county surrounding Las Vegas (Clark County, Nevada) as more details became known.

If you are like most companies, you can't afford the staff to perform the around the clock monitoring required to act promptly, the management of multiple concurrent disasters, and information gathering it takes to know when and where to suspend and resume contact for all types of possible events. But why bother when ContactRelief has this and more for less than $300 per month.

Why You Must Act Now

Our offer of free access to our service will expire soon. We provide the only service specially designed for contact centers and focused on all aspects of the customer experience during natural and man-made disasters. We can not only tell you when and where to suspend contact, but when and why you should resume contact, and how you can improve your brand image by the actions you take during these periods. Because before starting ContactRelief we owned and operated large contact centers, we understand your business perspective, and our recommendations are designed to help you deliver a great customer experience while still enabling you to achieve your other objectives.

Don't Delay

The next disaster is on its way. Become a ContactRelief subscriber and keep your company protected from disaster. Our full recommendations consist of the areas to be suspended and the list of zip codes covering these areas. For as little as $300 per month your company can quickly implement a solution that protects your company and its customers. As we say at ContactRelief, "It's just smart business."

Contact sales@contactrelief.com for more information.