Lane County names Monica Larcom as new emergency manager

Lane County’s newest emergency manager stepped into one of the county’s most consequential public safety jobs just as fire season is beginning to tighten its grip on the region. Monica Larcom, who started at the end of April, is now the lead emergency management professional for Lane County and manages the county’s Office of Emergency Management, a role that will help determine how quickly officials can warn residents, move people out of danger and coordinate across agencies when smoke and flames spread.

The timing matters. Lane County says wildfire is one of its most common and destructive hazards, especially in rural areas and in the wildland-urban interface where homes sit closest to forests and brush. Local emergency response officials can issue evacuation notices when there is a potential or immediate threat, and the county’s Lane Alerts system can send notifications about severe weather, fire, flooding, hazardous materials, immediate evacuation, civil danger, local area emergencies and missing persons.

Larcom arrives with experience that is unusually hands-on for a job built around crisis management. She spent nearly three years as the Lane County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue program supervisor, where she worked on countywide evacuation zones and took part in evacuation operations during the Coffeepot, Lookout and Bedrock fires. Her earlier career included seven years with the federal government, mostly at the National Park Service, where she handled search and rescue, emergency medical services, backcountry permitting and visual information. She also worked as an emergency dispatch aide and is licensed as an emergency medical technician-intermediate.

The county’s 2024 Emergency Operations Plan says emergency management updates the plan regularly and the Lane County Board of Commissioners approves it on a two-year cycle. That plan is the framework for coordinating response and recovery during major emergencies and disasters, and it places emergency management at the center of communications, resource management, public information and situational awareness. In practice, that means Larcom will be expected to keep fire agencies, law enforcement, medical responders and county leaders moving in the same direction when the next major incident hits.

County policy director Steve Adams said the county was glad to have someone who already knows Lane County and its communities in the position as fire season approaches. Larcom has already been visible in the public-facing side of the job, serving as the speaker for Lane County’s annual Lane Alerts test in May, when the system was checked through emails, recorded calls and texts ahead of fire season. Oregon wildfire guidance tells residents to check with county sheriff’s offices or emergency managers for local evacuation updates, a reminder that the county’s next emergency will be measured not just by response on the ground, but by how clearly officials can get the message out before the danger closes in.