Sunday, October 15, 2017

Californians say they didn't get emergency wildfire alerts

Californians say they didn't receive emergency wildfire alerts

By Dakin Andone, CNN

Updated 8:27 PM ET, Sun October 15, 2017

Wildfire victim: We had 5 minutes to escape 01:23

Story highlights

Some counties use mobile alert systems, but residents must subscribe or opt in
One resident says he received an alert after it was too late to leave

(CNN)When the wildfires in Northern California broke out this week, they spread so fast that many residents were caught off guard.

Some told CNN that the smell of smoke or their dogs whimpering were the only warnings they got before the fires tore through their neighborhoods, forcing them to flee their homes in the middle of the night.

Now local emergency management officials and authorities are facing criticism for how they informed residents of the fires -- and how they didn't.

"From what I've heard from (friends and family), no one got an alert," said Sonoma County resident Margaret Curzon, whose parents lost their home to the blaze. "Everyone was blindsided by this."

California counties and agencies used different methods to warn residents of impending danger from the fires, but some residents are saying they weren't effective. Here's a closer look at what was done and what was not.

The Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system

At a news conference Wednesday, state officials were questioned about why agencies had not used the federal Wireless Emergency Alert system to notify residents of the approaching fires.

You may recognize a Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) as the screech your cellphone makes when an Amber Alert has been issued in your area.

Local agencies must apply for the authority to issue such alerts, which are sent to participating phone carriers through the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS). According to the FCC, the WEA system sends alerts that are issued directly by the president, alerts that involve "imminent threats to safety or life" and Amber Alerts.

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This system is credited with helping authorities catch Ahmad Khan Rahimi, who is on trial for allegedly setting off bombs in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood in September 2016. Three hours after the NYPD, the FBI and the Office of Emergency Management sent an alert to area residents' phones, Rahimi was in police custody.

At the time, New York's police commissioner called the system "the future."

Several state and county-level agencies in California affected by the wildfires have the ability to send the federal alerts as of August, according to FEMA. They include the Governor's Office of Emergency Services (OES) and Sonoma and Mendocino Counties.

Some statewide agencies, like the governor's OES and the California Highway Patrol, also are authorized to use the system.

But Kelly Houston, deputy director for the OES, said the state doesn't send out alerts and warnings.

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"From the state level we wouldn't do that," she said. "Alerts and warnings happen on a local level. ... They decide what are the appropriate alerts for their population." Which system is used depends on the county's emergency plan, Houston said.

The California Highway Patrol's ability to use the WEA system "is limited only to Amber Alerts," said Sgt. Robert Nackey, "so the CHP wouldn't have been able to use the early-warning system to put out information regarding fires."

What alerts were used?

Mark Ghilarducci, director of the OES, told reporters Wednesday that "various counties use different ways to push information out to the public."

Those methods could include posting warnings and information on social media or using a reverse 911 call to notify landlines. Some agencies also rely on Nixle, a subscription alert service, but residents must opt in to receive its mobile or email alerts.

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Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano said the county -- which is authorized to send WEAs, according to FEMA -- has systems in place to notify residents with landlines, but suggested in a news conference that people sign up for SoCoAlerts, which can send notifications via cell phone, email or text messages. The county also uses Nixle, he said.

"If you don't sign your cellphone up, you don't get that service," Giordano said.

"So the message is, sign up for SoCoAlerts if you live in this county, because then it sends the message to your cell phone just like your house phone," he added. The speed at which the fires spread was also a factor in communications, he said.

Resident: 'Would've been nice to get an alert'

But those methods weren't enough to prepare Curzon or her parents, who didn't even know they existed.

Curzon's parents live in the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa. It's the largest city in Sonoma County, where the fires have claimed 17 lives. Her mother and father lost their home in the blaze Monday.

Curzon told CNN her mother woke up around 2 a.m. to the sound of their family dog whimpering. That's when she first became aware of the fire.

Hundreds of homes in the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa were destroyed by fire.

Neither Curzon nor her parents received any type of warning or alert ahead of the fire, she said, but she signed up for the county's Nixle alerts Monday morning after her roommate told her about them. "I didn't even know it existed before the fire happened," she said.

Curzon said she was familiar with Amber Alerts issued through the WEA system and found it "pretty disturbing" that Sonoma County had the ability to send out a warning but didn't.

"I mean, they could have sent out an alert to warn people about what was going on," she said. "Maybe they didn't because they didn't realize how quickly the fire was going to spread ... but it would've been nice to get an alert."

County: WEA would've notified too many people

Jennifer Larocque, a spokeswoman for Sonoma County, said officials chose not to send out a WEA because it would target too large a geographic area, evacuating residents who weren't in danger and causing gridlock on the roads.

"To keep everyone safe we chose not to use a mass alert that would have reached areas that are not affected by the fire, in turn keeping roads open for emergency vehicles reaching people in need," she said.