This is important to read and understand in so much as the Wrightwood Fire Safe Council is asking the County Fire Dept. to reinstall the warning sirens that the village had years ago.
If the issue concerns you, please plan on attending the FSC meeting on the 21st of this month as the County Fire Dept will be attending and we can make our voices heard!
Life-saving emergency alerts often come too late or not at all
https://www.aol.com/life-saving-emergency-alerts-often-142018727.html...CBS News found at least a dozen natural disasters in the United States during the last decade where local emergency officials failed to issue alerts in time to save lives or, in some cases, didn't issue an alert or evacuation order at all.
The most recent example is from the island of Maui. In August, reports show emergency managers sent out cellphone alerts too late after service was down and admitted they decided not to sound the island's warning sirens during the firestorm that destroyed the town of Lahaina. Maui's emergency manager later said he didn't set off the sirens because they were primarily meant for tsunamis — he feared residents would flee inland toward the flames. ...
The official investigation into what went wrong on Maui is ongoing. ...
The main issue is that folks who are responsible for pushing the button and sending the alerts need to err on the side of over-alerting [the public]. "But [the emergency managers are] worrying that they're going to cause a panic.
The Sonoma County emergency manager, who decided not to push the button in a timely matter on that fateful night in 2017, retired soon after the tragedy. He did not return numerous messages by CBS News requesting a comment.
Since then, the county created a new position called Community Alert and Warning Manager.
What was learned through painful experience is if you wait too long, then even if the information is accurate, it may not be effective. ...
California lawmakers even changed state law. The rules now say, "when dealing with uncertain or conflicting information about a threat, the Alerting Authority should choose to err on the side of protecting the public." ...
"If you think about it, very few emergency managers ever utilize the system," said FEMA's former administrator Craig Fugate. "We've got to move this to where emergency managers are comfortable activating the system." ...
The deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California's history, the November 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, a Butte County after-action report found "mass notification system failures resulted in notifications not reaching the intended audience." ....
