Santa Barbara County’s Emergency Management Chief Abruptly Resigns

Santa Barbara County's top emergency manager is gone, and the circumstances surrounding her departure are raising fresh questions about how one of California's most disaster-prone counties prepares for its worst days.

Kelly Hubbard, director of the county Office of Emergency Management (OEM), resigned abruptly this month, effective immediately, according to the Santa Barbara Independent. Her exit came just weeks after the Board of Supervisors formally pushed back on a scathing civil Grand Jury report that argued the county had allowed its emergency coordination office to shrink in both staffing and influence — even as the region faces some of the highest disaster risk in the nation.

Stacy Silva, OEM's associate director, has been appointed interim director while the county searches for a permanent replacement. A county spokesperson confirmed the resignation was effective immediately but declined to provide additional details, and Hubbard could not be reached for comment.

A Departure Loaded With Context

The timing is hard to ignore. Hubbard's resignation followed an August 25 hearing at which the Board of Supervisors rejected many of the key findings in the Grand Jury's June report, pointedly titled "Is the County Neglecting Emergency Preparedness?"

The report argued that OEM — currently staffed by just six employees, down from seven after recent budget cuts — is severely understaffed and underfunded for a county the Grand Jury said ranks in the top 1 percent nationally for disaster risk. It contrasted Santa Barbara's staffing with comparable counties: Sonoma expanded its emergency office from four to 16 employees after the deadly Tubbs Fire, and Monterey maintains 10 positions.

The Grand Jury also took aim at OEM's 2023 placement under the County Fire Department, arguing the arrangement has limited the director's authority to coordinate staff across agencies and left the county short of properly trained personnel to fully staff the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) during prolonged disasters. Among its recommendations: expand OEM to 12 full-time employees and return the office to a direct-report relationship with the County Executive Office.

Supervisors declined to adopt those recommendations. County Fire Chief Garrett Huff disputed the report's central premise outright at the hearing. "Is the county neglecting emergency preparedness?" he asked the board. "I feel the answer to that is no."

Huff argued the merger under County Fire hasn't changed OEM's mission or authority, and said the arrangement actually gives the small office access to a far larger pool of resources, including more than 300 Fire Department personnel and specialized logistics and communications divisions. He acknowledged staffing levels remain an open question — "We're not saying the staffing level right now is necessarily the right level" — but said the county plans to hire an independent consultant to study OEM's responsibilities and long-term needs before deciding whether to add positions.

Supervisors were similarly unmoved. Supervisor Joan Hartmann pointed to the county's repeated real-world emergency responses as evidence the system works, while Board Chair Bob Nelson called the OEM-Fire Department merger "a natural fit." Supervisor Laura Capps said the report omitted key elements of the county's broader emergency-response system and said the suggestion of neglect "does not at all comport with what we see every day and what we fund."

Hubbard's Tenure Spanned Crisis After Crisis

Hubbard took over OEM in 2019 following 14 years as emergency manager for the Municipal Water District of Orange County. She succeeded Rob Lewin, who retired amid public criticism over warnings and evacuations during the January 9, 2018 debris flow that killed 23 people in Montecito — a disaster that still looms over any conversation about the county's emergency preparedness.

Her seven-year tenure tested the office relentlessly. Hubbard — herself a survivor of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting — guided the county through the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple large wildfires, cyberattacks, and severe winter storms. She also oversaw the expansion of the Emergency Operations Center on Cathedral Oaks Road, the facility activated to coordinate the county's response when disaster strikes.

Now that institutional experience walks out the door at a moment when the Grand Jury, at least, believes the office is stretched dangerously thin.

Why It Matters Locally

Santa Barbara County residents live with a threat portfolio few places can match: wildfires, debris flows, flooding, earthquakes, and the ever-present risk of an oil spill along the Gaviota coast and Santa Barbara Channel. When the next Thomas Fire or atmospheric river arrives, OEM is the office responsible for coordinating alerts, evacuations, and recovery across cities, special districts, schools, and nonprofits.

The disagreement at the heart of this story is ultimately about resilience: whether a six-person office embedded in the Fire Department — with the backing of 300-plus fire personnel, as Huff argues — is better positioned than an independent, 12-person office reporting directly to county executives, as the Grand Jury contends.

For now, leadership of that office falls to Silva on an interim basis, with a permanent search ahead and a consultant's staffing study pending. Hubbard's abrupt exit, unexplained by the county, leaves residents to wonder whether the departure reflects the internal tensions the Grand Jury described — or simply a seasoned emergency manager ready for a change. The county isn't saying, and until it does, the question hanging over Cathedral Oaks Road is the same one the Grand Jury asked in June: Is the county neglecting emergency preparedness?

Supervisors have answered no. The coming consultant report, and the county's response to it, may determine whether that answer holds.