Safety Tip - Taco ‘Bout it Tuesday
This Tuesday let’s taco ‘bout weather and evacuation levels. These graphics should help you, your friends, family, and customers to understand some common weather or disaster-preparedness terms.
In the taco graphic (which is making me hungry), we illustrate what it means to have a weather “watch” versus a weather “warning.” For example, a few days in advance of a heat wave, winter storm, or many other possible weather conditions, we might get a “fire weather watch” or “winter storm watch,” etc. It basically means that all the conditions are present and folks should listen up for updates. AKA, the ingredients for the taco have been gathered and a taco could be built in the near future. A “warning” means that the potentially dangerous weather is happening now or is coming very soon and you should take action accordingly. AKA, the tacos are built and are being consumed.
Note: When we get a Fire Weather Watch in particular, our crews limit activities in elevated fire risk areas, and take extra precautionary measures. With a Fire Weather Warning or Red Flag Warning, we add even more potential actions, such as increasing the number of stand-by personnel or setting some breaker and recloser controls to “High Fire Risk” settings that sets fault detection to the most sensitive possible. This could mean increased outages. If you have more questions about that, check out our Wildfire Prevention Plan.
Since it’s not always clear what “Level 1 Evacuation” means, some agencies have correlated the levels of “1, 2, 3” to “Ready, Set, Go.” It’s good to note that Level 2 (Set) is also a good time to get going, especially if someone in your household has limited mobility or serious medical conditions, or you have large animals like cows or horses to move out, which takes extra time.
We will be sharing these graphics around social media and with some other groups, but feel free to use and share them yourselves. Safety First!