PD Editorial: When disaster strikes, wake up the world

Four months after failing to activate emergency warning systems during the October 2017 firestorm, Sonoma County officials conceded their mistake.

“We should have woken up the world,” Supervisor James Gore told The Press Democrat.

Sonoma County wasn't alone in its reluctance to activate emergency alert systems. In Mendocino County, according to news accounts, dispatchers waited for a supervisor to arrive before issuing fire warnings in 2017.

The twin North Coast failures seemingly didn't register with authorities in other counties. Santa Barbara County was slow to issue evacuation orders when mudslides started around the time that Gore was delivering Sonoma County's mea culpa. And, when a wildfire flattened the town of Paradise last fall, residents complained that they weren't warned to run for their lives.

Now, the state is urging local officials to make emergency alerts a top priority during fires and other disasters.

We hope they listen.

“It is an inherent responsibility of local government organizations and officials to keep the public informed about natural, human-caused and technological disasters in addition to what actions they need to take to protect themselves and their families,” the California Office of Emergency Services said in its newly issued guidelines for emergency alerts.

And, the guidelines said, “when dealing with uncertain or conflicting information about a threat, the Alerting Authority should choose to err on the side of protecting the public.”

In other words, wake up the world.

The state guidelines were produced in response to post-fire legislation sponsored by state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg. The law also requires the state Office of Emergency Services to offer training to local agencies, and although the guidelines are voluntary, grant funding for emergency management can be withheld from agencies that don't adopt them.

“There's a tendency for people in public safety to be afraid of warning,” Art Botterell, a retired state emergency services coordinator, told the Los Angeles Times. “They usually see it as an opportunity to get in trouble. There is a significant political risk of being hauled in front of your county supervisors because they got a lot of angry phone calls because you interrupted the football game.”

After the fires of 2017, we doubt that's going to happen anytime soon in Sonoma County.

Before the North Bay fires, only a handful of local residents had signed up for Nixle and similar opt-in alert services used by the county. Emergency officials feared that Amber Alert-style cellphone messages would reach too many people, delaying firefighters and other first responders as roads became clogged with people trying to flee, including people who didn't need to evacuate.

However, thousands of people who needed to get away didn't get any official warning. Some of them perished.

The state guidelines recommend that local agencies use systems, such as cellphone alerts, that reach the largest audience. The guidelines also say that incomplete or imperfect information isn't a valid reason for delaying alerts.

No system is foolproof. There are likely to be times when people will have to fend for themselves, perhaps a fast-moving fire or a sudden disaster such as an earthquake (although the state is building an earthquake early-warning system.).

But, as Gore told us in the wake of the 2017 fires, “If you do it correctly, you cannot over-alert people.”

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