County Is Awash in Emergencies : Government: A series of crises has had officials declaring states of emergency one right on top of another. Three were simultaneously in effect last week.

If it sometimes seems that Orange County is bouncing from one emergency to the next, that’s because it’s true--at least on paper.

The past six months have featured an unusual string of emergency declarations by the county government, culminating in a brief moment last week when the county had three such declarations in place at the same time. Even among longtime county leaders, it was an occasion for pause.

“These things sure are coming fast,” said Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, who has spent 16 years on the board and could not recall a previous time when the county had three officially declared emergencies overlapping. “I don’t think there’s much we can do about it. I mean, we can’t stop emergencies from happening,” he said.

The recent flurry started last fall when the Mediterranean fruit fly came to the county. Once the bug showed up in county fruit, the Board of Supervisors quickly approved a state of emergency to protect the county against lawsuits that might result from the aerial spraying of malathion.

Then, with that infestation still in full swing, an oil tanker ran over its own anchor and leaked 394,000 gallons of Alaskan crude oil on the Orange County shore.

And just as the oil spill emergency waned last week, a persistent measles epidemic pushed health experts to take action. County Health Officer L. Rex Ehling declared the emergency on the morning of April 16, about 24 hours before supervisors voted to end the oil spill emergency.

“I’ve been with the county for about seven years, and I don’t recall anything like it,” said Marilee Miller, senior emergency management coordinator for the county. “It’s pretty unusual, that’s for sure.”

Why the county finds itself in the midst of so many emergencies is a matter of some disagreement, though all parties agree that the biggest reason is simply a run of bad luck. In addition to the emergencies themselves, however, the process for formally declaring them has become more widely used in recent years, making them a more common occurrence than in the past.

“People are becoming more aware of what the emergency declaration provides,” said Christine Boyd, manager of the county’s Emergency Management Division. “When you get people who are more aware of the process, you get more people making use of it.”

A litigation-prone public also makes county officials more wary about doing anything that might increase the county’s legal liability, Riley added, so the thought of refusing a request for an emergency declaration rarely crosses the supervisors’ minds.

The formal emergency declaration provides several things to governments that turn to it. First, as Riley noted, it limits liability for actions taken in combatting an emergency: In the case of the Medfly, for instance, the county’s declaration makes it less likely to be sued successfully by residents complaining of the effects of malathion, which is toxic to some animals but which state experts say is safe to humans.

Second, the declaration marks the first step toward letting residents and others get access to state and federal money available for combatting certain problems. Without the measles emergency declaration, the county could not apply for a state grant to fight the epidemic; if the supervisors vote today to reaffirm the health officer’s declaration, as they are expected to, the health office plans to apply for $304,424 in aid.

Finally, a declaration gives the county extraordinary powers that it would not be able to command under ordinary circumstances. During the oil spill, for instance, declaring a state of emergency let county officials close otherwise public beaches.

“They can do anything from imposing martial law to confiscating property,” Miller said. “The whole gamut of activities that you need to deal with an emergency becomes possible when you issue the declaration.”

So far, Orange County has always stopped well short of imposing martial law, and, for the most part, its states of emergency have been relatively short-lived. Most last no more than a few weeks or months, and they have to be reaffirmed every two weeks by the board, a cumbersome political process that supervisors sometimes resent but are obliged to go through under state law.

The reaffirmations have become politically painful on the Medfly issue in particular because supervisors dislike having to continually cast votes on malathion, a decidedly controversial topic.

Supervisors, bureaucrats and residents agree, however, that the most annoying thing about the emergencies is that you never know where or when the next one’s going to hit.

“It may seem like a lot right now, but there can always be more,” said Al Villere, senior planner with the Los Angeles branch of the state Office of Emergency Services. “After all, all it takes is an earthquake, and they’d be looking at four emergencies instead of three.”