Cara Brown McCormick
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As President Donald Trump calls for the reopening and expansion of Alcatraz Island to house the nation’s “most ruthless and violent offenders,” a new state audit raises alarms about California’s state prison system: most state-run facilities are not adequately prepared to evacuate during natural disasters.
The audit, released by the California Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in May 2025, found that many prisons lack clear, actionable plans for evacuating incarcerated individuals and staff beyond facility grounds, despite California’s heightened vulnerability to wildfires, floods, and earthquakes.
“Not only are some prisons overcrowded,” the report states, “but the department is unable to evacuate the incarcerated population and staff at most prisons within the first critical 72 hours of an emergency. In addition, prisons do not have specific plans to externally evacuate the incarcerated population.”
Led by Inspector General Amarik K. Singh and Chief Deputy Inspector General Shaun Spillane, the audit reviewed 2024 emergency operations plans from 30 California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) facilities. It assessed each plan for compliance with state regulations, departmental policy, and best practices.
The findings were stark: “those plans are general in nature and inadequate if large-scale external evacuations are necessary.” Although most site-specific plans included internal relocation procedures, such as moving individuals within different areas of the prison, none included detailed strategies for evacuations beyond the prison gates.
The audit also highlighted significant logistical obstacles. Site-specific audits of Valley State Prison, California Rehabilitation Center, and San Quentin Rehabilitation Center revealed concerns about the department’s aging and limited transportation fleet. One prison bus has logged nearly 533,000 miles, another over 676,000, and five buses have accumulated between 730,000 and 858,000 miles each.
“The location and high mileage of transportation buses and other fleet vehicles likely limit the department’s ability to evacuate most prisons within 72 hours,” auditors wrote. At one prison, the nearest regional hub is roughly 400 miles away.
The audit noted that if a natural disaster necessitated evacuating San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, the closest departmental fleet vehicles not permanently located at the prison or at a nearby prison would be in Galt, approximately 90 miles away. This is a striking logistical gap for a prison perched on the edge of San Francisco Bay, within view of Alcatraz Island, and vulnerable to major earthquakes.
In December 2024, a tsunami warning was issued for Northern California following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake offshore; both San Quentin and Alcatraz were located within the warning zone.
Audit Report No. 24 01 is titled Audit of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Natural Disaster Emergency Preparedness and Mitigation Efforts.