Officials talk telecom in wake of fires
By: BRADLEY J. FIKES - Staff Writer
How cell phone networks, emergency alerts fared in October topic of discussion Wednesday | ∞
SAN DIEGO -- Hoping to alert people more effectively when California's next disaster strikes, wireless telephone carriers and emergency communication agencies compared notes about last fall's wildfires on Wednesday.
About 50 people at the California Public Utilities Commission workshop in San Diego seemed to agree that new technology such as the Reverse 911 notification system and the 211 information service helped evacuate hundreds of thousands of residents fairly smoothly. However, they said, worrisome glitches and oversights should be fixed.
Art Botterell, manager of the warning system for Contra Costa County, captured the sense of the meeting when he said that multiple, redundant means of communication are probably the best answer.
"There is not a magic bullet warning technology," Botterell said. "If we look at the social science on how people process warnings, corroboration and a coordinated use of multiple warning systems is a necessity simply because of the human nature of the recipients, leaving aside any questions of technological reach or reliability."
But on the issues that agencies faced, speakers cited the following flaws:
Some said cell phone users should register their phones with the County Office of Emergency Services and emergency agencies across the state should make sure they can easily share information and talk with each other.
Communications need to flow both ways between emergency agencies and the public, and 211 helped this in the San Diego County wildfires, said John A. Ohanian, chief executive of 211 for San Diego County. Residents reported fires that agencies weren't aware of, and also when there were no fires in locations that were reported as burning.
"There was Palomar Mountain being evacuated. We kept getting phone calls from people in San Marcos that said, 'I'm receiving a Reverse 911 call telling me to get out, but I don't see any flames,' " Ohanian said. That information was given to the county's Office of Emergency Services.
"We were also getting calls from people who said they hadn't received Reverse 911 calls, saw flames, but it wasn't being covered by the media," Ohanian said. "We were able to transmit that information back and get (deputies) out there who could see if there were actually fires."
Unexpectedly, emergency responders also used 211.
"We had Sheriff's Department (responders) out in the community, who couldn't get through to their dispatch, couldn't get through to 911, got through to 211, because they found a live power line, and needed to get it reported," Ohanian said.
They also discussed ways to make sure disaster information is sent in a form that people preferred to use.
E-mail was not very helpful in getting to students at the University of San Diego, said Pamela Gray Payton, an assistant vice president for the university.
"E-mail has become less efficient," Payton said. "Text messaging is really the primary way students would like to be communicated with in an emergency."
That observation could be made at many universities, because surveys have found that younger people use text messaging on their cell phones more often than e-mail.
However, text messaging also has flaws, said Natasha Rabe, chief business officer of the NTI Group, a communications systems company. Messages are not transmitted instantly, but received and held in a queue before delivery. Sometimes, messages have been delayed for hours.
-- Contact staff writer Bradley J. Fikes at (760) 739-6641 or bfikes@nctimes.com.
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