A Job to Prepare Her for the Worst

She was born in what her mother called the worst snowstorm in Minnesota history.

As a tot she was called “Tornado,” a nickname to denote her penchant for turning a clean room into a disaster zone in seconds.

It seems only fitting, then, that 40-year-old Laura D. Hernandez would find herself in the disaster response business in the county she moved to at the age of 3.

Born in St. Paul, Minn., but raised and schooled in Santa Paula, she has spent the last decade and a half learning the ins and outs of coordinating emergency response efforts during Southern California’s notorious disasters.

And now, as Ventura County’s new assistant director in the Office of Emergency Services, life and career have come full circle.

“There’s something to be said for working in the county where you live,” said Hernandez, who had spent the past five years commuting to her previous disaster response job in Santa Monica from her Hollywood Beach home. “You feel different about your job. More connected.”

Good thing.

With El Nino threatening dire winter weather, Hernandez has picked a doozy of a year to return, spending the last 10 months preparing to handle whatever havoc nature may wreak on her home county.

To be sure, the dreaded weather system that in years past has brought torrents of rain and high waves to these parts is not her only worry.

There are earthquakes and fires, toxic spills and air disasters, to name a few.

Whether the storms are fierce or they fizzle, the county’s efforts to prepare for wicked winter weather have not been in vain, she said.

“I think everything we’ve been doing to prepare for this El Nino threat has been tremendous,” says Hernandez, hired to the new post in January. “Even if El Nino doesn’t happen, the plans that we put in place are going to help us in future disasters. The threat of El Nino has really kicked everyone into gear.”

By law, Sheriff Larry Carpenter is the real leader of the county’s emergency response effort. But in opening an El Nino education seminar in Thousand Oaks last week, Carpenter was quick to note that Hernandez deserves the credit.

“She’s really the director,” he said. “Laura is the one that really puts the things together, and she’s been a terrific asset to what we’re trying to do in Ventura County.”

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The effort has consumed countless hours of her time.

There have been myriad meetings, mock disaster drills, regional seminars and an endless effort to meet and greet the 65 or 70 top officials in the public and private sectors who will be responsible for handling disaster situations.

The middle of an emergency is no place to meet someone, she jokes, part of an effort to find humor in a job notorious for its stress.

Consider her take on last week’s schedule.

On seeing Vice President Al Gore in Santa Monica during Tuesday’s nationwide summit on storm preparedness: “I saw the back of his head.”

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On Thursday’s welcomed break from disaster planning for a workshop on sexual harassment: “As long as I don’t hear the words El Nino.”

On Friday morning, she was all business at a workshop with Southern California Edison that followed two earlier meetings.

She did not hesitate to ask the pertinent questions as Edison officials demonstrated their operations center. Computer maps chart every circuit, every transformer, every house, right down to the home of the chronically ill person whose survival depends on electrical power.

How is the information going to be shared with the county’s emergency response teams, she asked.

Can the county obtain immediate access to these maps? What are the potential dangers to restoring power to a home 3 feet underwater? If the ground is saturated, just how much wind can the average utility power pole stand?

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“No disaster is the same,” she explained later. “There is no such thing as a disaster expert. Each disaster comes with its own set of circumstances and problems, but you can learn from each one.”

Hernandez’s interest in disaster response was piqued while she studied on a fellowship for her master’s degree in public administration at Cal State Los Angeles.

An internship found her in the Los Angeles city administrator’s office, where she worked as a budget analyst for the police and fire departments, including the city’s emergency operations.

She immediately was hooked by the challenge of pulling together an array of government agencies that don’t normally interact--from flood control and police to utility companies and nonprofit agencies.

Armed with her master’s degree, she landed her first job as emergency services coordinator for the city of Santa Monica.

It took just three weeks for her first emergency: a major petroleum spill in a city storm drain.

“Birth by fire,” she calls it, remembering how she was thrust into the role of public information officer at the scene and found herself on the evening news.

She spent nearly 11 years in that job. But at 8.1 square miles, the city proved too small, its disasters too infrequent.

“She gave about 10 good years to Santa Monica,” said her friend and former co-worker, Santa Monica Fire Department spokeswoman Roni Roseberg. “But I think she was ready for a step up, a bigger jurisdiction. We were sorry to see her go.”

Lauded by friends and colleagues as diligent, conscientious and affable, Hernandez volunteered with the American Red Cross while still working in Santa Monica in an effort to gain more field experience.

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By April 1995, she found herself helping organize volunteers in the aftermath of the federal building bombing in Oklahoma City.

A thick slab of glass and a chunk of marble from the building’s plaza sit on her office windowsill at the County Government Center, grim reminders of how quickly her work can turn deadly serious.

“It was ominous,” she recalls.

She jumped at the job offer in Ventura, a county encompassing 1,884 square miles and 42 miles of coastline. After all, it’s home.

Hernandez was born in Minnesota while her father studied for the Lutheran ministry. Mishael Hernandez was a strong advocate of education, she recalls.

Her mother, Virginia, proved to be a rock of self-sufficiency following Mishael Hernandez’s death when Laura was 15.

Virginia Hernandez worked tirelessly as a customer service representative for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to put five of her seven children through college.

The tenets her parents instilled in her remain, Laura said.

“It’s exciting work,” she says of her life’s work.

“In the emergency management profession, we are not police officers, we are not firefighters and we are not directly involved in saving lives. But I would like to think that indirectly, we do have something to do with saving lives and property and the environment. It gives me a lot of satisfaction.”