Agoura Hills council adopts state-required evacuation analysis after public safety debate

Agoura Hills city councilors on Wednesday adopted a state-required evacuation analysis and related textual amendments to the general plan safety element, saying the technical study will guide future planning even as residents urged pause and further work.

Community Development Director Robbie Necovic presented the draft analysis, telling the council the project does not authorize housing, physical road changes, or reduce roadway capacity. "This project does not approve any new housing units in any capacity," Necovic said, adding the analysis is intended to identify evacuation-route capacity, safety and viability under several wildfire scenarios and to inform future planning.

Kimley‑Horn traffic engineer Matt Stewart described the technical assumptions behind the study: four wildfire scenarios (including daytime scenarios that assume schools are occupied), conservative full‑buildout population assumptions, two vehicles per household, and a passenger‑car‑equivalent (PCE) factor to account for horse trailers in Old Agoura. ‘‘In each scenario the routes were determined to be safe and viable,’’ Stewart said, while noting specific segments — notably Canaan Road and Reyes Adobe — exceed a 1.0 volume‑to‑capacity threshold in several scenarios and would take more than an hour to clear without mitigation.

The staff report recommends temporary and operational measures — such as counterflow operations on constrained segments, targeted early‑warning communications, staged voluntary evacuations and signal‑timing plans — rather than immediate physical infrastructure projects. Necovic said those recommendations are designed to support incident command and regional emergency partners and that the city would coordinate with Los Angeles County Fire and the sheriff on operational decisions, which remain under incident command authority.

More than 40 residents spoke during a lengthy public‑comment period. Speakers from Old Agoura, Oak Park and the Santa Monica Mountains urged the council to delay adoption, citing firsthand experience during the 2018 Woolsey Fire and claiming the report understates horse‑trailer impacts and the number of households dependent on Canaan Road. Cindy Larson, an Old Agoura resident, told the council: "If you build apartments anywhere on Canaan, our main evacuation route, devastation will occur because of the overload of cars trying to get out." Several commenters asked the city to run full‑scale counterflow drills and to refine model inputs (postal‑route counts, vehicle‑trip patterns and disabled‑vehicle assumptions).

In response, Stewart and Necovic said the analysis used Woolsey‑era data, incorporated additional scenarios requested by the planning commission (including a school‑in‑session daytime scenario), and intentionally applied conservative assumptions to identify worst‑case roadway stress points. "We included the Santa Monica Mountain community and Oak Park in scenario modeling," Stewart said, adding the study also models alternate gateways and recognizes that incident dynamics will vary.

Council members stressed the distinction between the analysis and an operational evacuation plan. "This is an analysis — it is not our evacuation plan," Mayor Pro Tem Klein Lopez said. Members described the document as a necessary compliance step under AB 747 and AB 1409 that also provides a technical foundation to pursue grants, conduct drills and develop an implementation plan addressing traffic control, volunteer training, and interagency coordination.

Council member Penny Sylvester moved to adopt the resolution; Mayor Pro Tem Klein Lopez seconded. The council adopted Resolution No. 26‑2129 by a 5–0 roll‑call vote, and staff made CEQA‑exemption findings in the staff report. The resolution amends the safety element to incorporate the evacuation analysis by reference, updates exhibits to reflect current fire hazard severity maps and lists the evacuation analysis and evacuation plan as appendices to the general plan.

Council members and staff said next steps will include regional coordination with incident‑command agencies, development of a city implementation plan (including potential counterflow protocols and training), pursuit of grant funding, and conducting practical exercises so that counterflow or other temporary roadway enhancements can be tested before they are needed. Necovic said community engagement and interagency preplanning will be critical as the city moves from analysis to operational planning.