Wildfire History Repeats; Officials Keep Trying To Push Warnings to Residents Using Systems that Just Don’t Get It Done, Even as AM Radio Is Under-Utilized

The philosopher was right: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  

 The Northern California wildfires this week are showing how right he was. 

 

Emergency managers continue to screw up evacuation messages to residents that are meant to save lives. From the Santa Rosa Press Democrat:

Sonoma County officials are trying to rectify mistakes made with its various emergency alert systems that at times this week have either gone to the wrong area or even included evacuation orders from previous wildfires.

 

The Los Angeles Times took note of alert confusion and failures in an August 25th story headlined “California emergency alert system experiences some problems as monster fires raged” (subscription required):

And then there is Sonoma County, where, unlike three years ago when the previous emergency management director failed to alert some residents of a fire at all, the department’s current leader is concerned with having alerted too many. “Using this system is like doing your taxes every time,” Chris Godley, Sonoma County’s director of emergency management, said of their alert software. “It’s a very challenging, technical process each time you do this, even though we’re relatively well-versed.”

 

Not to pick on Sonoma County, but if it has a phone-based system that’s too “challenging” and “technical” to make work, maybe it should try something else – something really really simple like AM radio.

 

Hiding in Plain Sight

 

We’ve been promoting century-old ubiquitous AM radio in the wake of repeated emergency management failures to issue effective evacuation warnings during Sonoma County’s Tubbs Fire in October 2017 and Redding’s Carr Fire in 2018.

 

A warning system has obviously failed if fire survivors say they never heard a warning. Many who escaped the Camp Fire that killed 85 in Paradise, CA in November 2018 said they received no warning.

The Wildfire Crisis website (now inactive but findable using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine) didn’t just criticize; it had a proposal for An Improved Emergency Alert System Using Radio. Check it out at the link, but here’s the essence:  

Once a crisis is close at hand, as it was in Redding during the Carr Fire and Paradise's Camp Fire, the system of emergency alerts would be activated, but unlike those incidents, AM radio would be an official part of the mix. Public information officers and other official spokespersons (battalion chiefs, incident commanders, etc.) would include the designated station in their outreach. A PIO would be sited at the radio station to be a conduit for evacuation orders from the field straight to the public over the radio. If not actually positioned at the station, PIOs and others would push this critical information to the public over the designated station. As noted at the CHORE website, there’s not a station owner or general manager alive who’d refuse the opportunity of being THE go-to station for news and information critical to the community.

 

To some extent, this already is being done by Napa County’s Emergency Services office. The County specifically directs residents to KVON AM for emergency updates and has a contractual relationship with the station for public service announcements throughout the year.

 

KVON was so useful during the 2017 Wine Fire that the County Grand Jury’s report on the emergency said: 

“When the power went out, and the public could no longer receive information from TV, the Internet or (warning system) Nixle, it was old technology that saved the day. Residents got in their cars or dug out their batter-powered radios to tune in to KVON.” Napa County Supervisor Belia Ramos said,” Radio became what Nixle could not be for us because of the cellular system going down.” 

 

Napa County gets it. Will emergency planners and managers elsewhere fall even a little out of love with their phone-based digital systems and include AM Radio as a warning tool?

 

Only future wildfires will tell.

Improved Public Information System Needed To Save Lives during California Wildfires in the New Abnormal

More lives were lost in the November 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, CA than in any other fire in the state's history. As of November 20, the count had reached 79, with hundreds of residents still missing.

Survivors have complained they received no warning as flames raced into the community of 27,000 and destroyed nearly every structure. 

As reported widely, officials did not activate a warning system that was designed to issue evacuation alerts. Today’s San Francisco Chronicle reports:

“Like Sonoma County officials last year, authorities in Butte County are coming under attack for not issuing a wide-spread emergency message to cell phones, known as a Wireless Emergency Alert, or WEA, when the fire broke out.

“The high death toll of the Camp Fire is in large part due to people failing to learn of the danger and quickly evacuate. Several burned in their cars.”

Officials said the fire was so hot and fast-moving that “devastation is inevitable, especially as the climate continues to change.” Gov. Jerry Brown calls it the “new abnormal” in a warming and drying climate.

If that’s true, then California can anticipate many more fast-moving fires that will threaten to take untold numbers of lives in the years and decades ahead.

PUBLIC INFORMATION REFORM

No fire can outrun a radio broadcast, yet old-school radio has been overtaken in the new digital age by an over-reliance on cell phone technology that is highly vulnerable and unreliable in wildfires.

The highly-structured incident command system unfortunately may be one reason critical information is slow to reach the public in an emergency – as counter-intuitive as that may seem.

The IC system values coordination among all the parties over fast entrepreneurial initiative by those charged with disseminating information to the public. That’s an opinion based on up-close observation when the writer had PIO responsibilities during the 2017 Oroville Spillways emergency.

CHORE’s sister website Wildfire Crisis lays out the basics for a broadcast-focused fast-acting information dissemination system that is much more entrepreneurial than the widely used incident command structure.

Individual public information officers would be dispatched to (principally AM radio) stations and would be the on-air link between incident command teams and the public. The stations would be publicized in the calm time between emergencies as the public's sources of critical crisis information.

That’s not happening today, yet each fire brings more survivor accounts that they didn't receive a cell phone alert or any other warning. Reform clearly must happen in the “new abnormal.” 

What remains to be seen is whether those charged with command of the current system are flexible enough to admit the failures and adapt to new ways of alerting the public -- ways that actually save lives.

Have Crisis Managers Forgotten Radio? Redding’s Emergency Preparedness Page Mentions Radio Only in Passing re Alerts about Threats and Evacuations

The Sunday July 29, 2018 Sacramento Bee reported that the Bledsoe family, which lost a great-grandmother and two great-grandchildren in the Carr fire that’s been raging in Northern California, had no idea an evacuation had been ordered. 

Is there no organized communications effort among all responding agencies in these crisis situations directing people to tune to one designated emergency radio station? Even flip phone owners presumably have access to radio. A multi-channel communications effort to direct people to listen for fast-changing alerts and evacuation orders on ONE RADIO STATION appears to not even exist. There isn’t a station owner or manager alive who’d refuse an official request to become the go-to station in a crisis.

Regarding the above headline: The City of Redding’s Emergency Preparedness website — https://www.cityofredding.org/departments/fire-department/prevention/emergency-preparedness — mentions radio only in passing as a reliable communications channel during life-threatening emergencies. Here’s the site’s advice: “Learn about your community's warning signals: what they sound like and what you should do when your hear them.” But it has nothing like this: “Station (XYZ) is the designated emergency broadcast station in this region. Tune to (station’s frequency) to stay informed about threats to your safety.”

If electricity is cut to a siren or the site’s battery is dead, that warning signal won’t happen. It’s as if all of crisis response has fallen in love with “signals” and social media and texting and “push messages,” leaving the broadest form of communication in yesterday’s dustbin. This is bad public policy! Don’t authorities have a plan to use radio — the most reliable and accessible communications tool — in a crisis?

Another issue: The Bledsoe family’s tragedy is especially hard to understand since one of the aunties told the Bee she could see from the checkpoint that halted her effort to save her relatives that the family’s house hadn’t yet burned. She was stopped by authorities from rescuing the great-grandmother and the kids. What’s the protocol when someone tells authorities “...but they’re RIGHT THERE! I CAN SEE THE HOUSE!!” Nobody goes? Nobody in authority goes? They stand their ground but don’t otherwise respond to this kind of incoming intelligence?

Emergency planners aren’t immune from scrutiny. It’s how mistakes are avoided in the next crisis. The Sonoma County fires last fall resulted in many post-action assessments of what went right and wrong. One of the first corrections that needs to happen NOW is incorporating old-fashioned-but-reliable AM radio into the emergency communications protocol. Relying on text messages and all the high-tech channels may be trendy, but it’s costing lives. Not including radio in emergency notification borders on the irresponsible.

Response to NorCal 's Massive Wildfires Needs Evaluation -- Without Delay

The Northern California wildfire devastation is nearly impossible to comprehend unless you lived through it, which we have not had to do in Sacramento. But the disaster has touched everyone no matter where they live, and citizens now have opportunities -- if not an outright obligation -- to do what we can in response. Monetary donations are perhaps the easiest, but each of us can also dig deep to see what we can contribute from our own experiences and backgrounds.

No response system is immune from improvement, and the death toll from these wildfires -- now at 41 and rising -- demands a rethinking of how our elected and appointed officials responded to this emergency. Subjects in need of a thorough review include:
* Emergency notification systems; the Sacramento Bee today delves into what worked and what didn't
* Optimal positioning of fire-fighting assets once hurricane-strength winds are forecast and fires break out;
* Many more....

I started this Citizens Helping Officials Respond to Emergencies (CHORE) blog after the 2006 earthquakes off the coast of Hawaii's Big Island -- 11 years ago today on Sunday, October 15, 2006. My "Your CHORE" blog detailed the inadequacy of the response, and it's now time for citizens to take up this new chore. Please read the first post from 2006 here at Your CHORE and contribute your thoughts by leaving a Comment.

Perry and Price Are Right: They Really COULD Do Their Brand of Emergency Broadcasting from Albania

Hawaii News Now reports "live" from the Big Island; 
1500 AM on Oahu delivered the goods on Iselle with the HNN simulcast.

Honolulu’s designated emergency broadcaster, KSSK, did what it said it would do – move its market-leading broadcast personalities to Las Vegas the day before Hurricane Iselle was expected to hit the islands. You can read about that decision here.

In so many respects, KSSK’s emergency broadcast role in August 2014 mirrors how the station performed after the October 2006 Big Island earthquakes (here, and here), how it performed after the December 2008 island-wide power outage and on other occasions, most of which are chronicled at CHORE (such as here, here, here and here).

In a nutshell, there’s nothing in KSSK’s approach to emergency broadcasting to suggest it knows how to respect the emergency. And here’s the proof:

KSSK’s 7:30 a.m. Newscast on August 8, 2014 – about five hours after Hurricane Iselle arrived on the Big Island.

Story Lineup

* Iraq ISIS attacks status

* FAA orders airlines to avoid Iraq airspace

* Verdict expected on 9/11 in the Oscar Pistorius trial (includies background)

* World Health Organization declares ebola international health risk

* Wall Street – gold price, oil price, 10-year bond yield, DOW average

* Central Pacific Hurricane Center’s 5 a.m. report noting the storm is “heading toward” Hilo

* HELCO power outage report from the Big Island

* Geothermal power plant hydrogen sulfide leak – and a description of how the gas smells (for at least the third time this morning)

* Hurricane Julio 5 a.m. location report

* TheBus schedule

* Red Cross emergency shelters opened at 10 last night; 577 people

* No trash service today, no bulky item pickup.

* State and City and County employees told to stay home

* Schools closed

* Shopping Centers closed

* Zippy restaurants closed at five locations

* Airports open, harbors closed

* For a list of closures, visit KSSK.com

* Perry thanks everyone for doing a great job

* Mayor Caldwell thanks P&P for “all the information you’re getting out to your listening audience.”

Was that useful information, Mr. Mayor, or just talk? Keep in mind that the hurricane (downgraded to tropical storm after landfall) was still impacting the Big Island at the time of the newscast (at least a foot of rain had fallen in some locations we learn elsewhere on the radio dial), and its effects are being felt on other islands, including Oahu. So listeners just tuning in presumably want to know one thing and one thing only: What’s happening with Hurricane Iselle?

Here’s how a broadcast journalism professor might critique this KSSK newscast:

1. What would it take for the Perry & Price show to alter its format? First comes the national and international news, then the financial news and then the local news. It’s been forever so, from one emergency situation to the next, and it’s now been reaffirmed that not even a hurricane is enough to change the format.

2. KSSK is a designated emergency broadcast channel. Therefore, KSSK has a responsibility to communicate meaningfully during emergencies to its listeners. It doesn’t do that when it de-emphasizes the local emergency in favor of mundane news reports from far away. The Oscar Pistorius trial verdict? In September? Seriously?

3. The majority of the newscast’s storm-related news was available a day earlier – shopping center closures, bus schedules, schools, non-essential city and state workers, trash pickup. In other words, these reports were not “news.” They were old status reports read as news on the station.

4. Unanswered questions: What are the damage particulars on the Big Island? How much rain has fallen? Are there any injuries? The Big Island is big, so what are conditions like in Hilo, Waimea, South Point and Kona – all roughly representing the island’s compass points? What about Maui, Lanai and Molokai? What about Oahu? What’s the latest forecast for TS Iselle over the next 12 hours? Is it raining hard anywhere? Is the surf dangerous? Are lifeguards warning residents and tourists to stay out of the water? What is going on here?

We’re not alone in our assessment of this emergency broadcaster’s repeated failures to react appropriately during emergencies. After crediting KSSK for being on the air with emergency generation after the 2008 event, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin editorialized: 

“However, information that got on the air was frequently incomplete, misleading or contradictory. The on-air staff members were unable to separate crucial duties in an emergency from their usual drive-time, talk-show format.

“That's not to say a touch of lightheartedness has no place in such a situation; it can help ease listeners' tensions. But the hosts at times became abusive or mocked callers who sought advice or help for problems the hosts deemed minor under the circumstances.

“In one instance a caller who criticized Hawaiian Electric Co. - which shrewdly sent a public relations representative to the station early on - was scorned as someone who probably voted for Democrats.

“While such nonsensical remarks can be shrugged off, the primary problem with the broadcast was that the station's staff worked passively. Instead of seeking information from authorities, the station simply waited for them to call in. And when they did call, the staff did not ask astute questions to clarify or expand on the condition.”

Obviously, KSSK’s emergency broadcast performance is a recurring problem for Hawaii listeners who tune in to Perry and Price out of habit – not because they're served well during emergencies. We say it again: Residents deserve better than they’re getting on KSSK.

Fortunately, they do get better storm coverage on the radio – especially at 1500 AM, the NBC Sports Radio station that simulcasts the Hawaii News Now television coverage during emergencies. It’s essentially non-stop storm news, and the HNN team is an infinitely better source of essential information residents can actually use.

Honolulu's Dynamic Radio Duo Will Ride Out Hurricanes in Vegas. How's THAT for a Commitment to Public Service?

Perry and Price, here today and gone to -- not Maui tomorrow-- but to Vegas. 
(Think George W. flying over New Orleans and looking down on Katrina damage.)

I WOULD NOT HAVE BELIEVED IT IF I HADN'T HEARD IT WITH MY OWN TWO EARS.

Two major storms have Hawaii in their sights, and both will arrive as hurricanes or tropical storms in our first week of visiting Eric and our grandkids. That's not the almost unbelievable fact, though.

Almost unbelievable is the fact that the two radio personalities who dominate the airwaves on KSSK radio in normal weather and assume the mantle of EMERGENCY BROADCASTERS SUPREME during blackouts, earthquakes, storms and floods ARE LEAVING THE ISLANDS BEFORE THE STORMS ARRIVE!!!

My Hawaii friends may vaguely remember my emergency communications website that has been critical of KSSK's performance during emergencies over the years. The basic complaint is that this highly-rated broadcasting duo simply moves their weekday morning entertainment mindset into their coverage of whatever emergency period that is befalling Hawaii at any given time. They continue to "entertain" notwithstanding the need to "emergency communicate" during the islands' collective trauma

So what will this entertainment-centric duo be doing when Iselle and Julio arrive in the next few days? THEY'LL BE IN VEGAS -- entertaining! They said so themselves on their radio show this morning. But not to worry, Hawaii: "We could do our show from Albania," Mike Perry said more than once. All they allegedly need is a microphone, a telephone line and the regular KSSK staff, all of whom are decamping to Sin City in the hours before Iselle arrives. In other words, they'll keep their listeners' calls a-comin' and put them on the air -- which of course is the exact opposite of how responsible emergency communicators would treat a crisis.

Let's hope ‪#‎Iselle‬ and ‪#‎Julio‬ are minor inconveniences for Hawaii, with no power outages, no damaging storm surges and nothing more noteworthy than extra-hefty trade winds. Because if the storms generate much more than that, most residents and visitors will be hanging on every word during KSSK's "emergen-tainment" show, if ratings are a predictor of the listening audience. And as you can read at the links elsewhere in this blog, ratings are what's important to Clear Channel. Hawaii citizens deserve better.

How the Failure To Issue an Effective Ocean Tsunami Warning May Help Prepare the Crisis Communications Response to the Next California River Flood

Some coincidences shouldn’t be ignored.

           

“The Impossible,” a movie on one family’s harrowing experience during and after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, opened in Sacramento theaters on January 4.

An earthquake near Alaska a few hours later that evening triggered a tsunami warning for nearby coastal regions.

And running in the background since at least November have been media reminders of Sacramento’s extraordinary vulnerability to flooding, which a Sacramento Bee story described as “the greatest flood risk of any major urban area in America."

If there’s a thread linking ocean tsunamis and river floods, now’s the time to find it. Lessons learned from the 2004 tsunami could help Sacramento prepare for floods that may arrive this Spring.

A key component of any disaster preparedness plan is communications – knowing well in advance how and when officials will alert populations to a threat or actual disaster.

The key dramatic moment early in "The Impossible" is the tsunami’s explosive arrival with no warning whatsoever. The family of five at the heart of the drama, along with hundreds of thousands of coastal residents and vacationers in Thailand and a dozen more countries, were taken completely by surprise, with disastrous results. Deaths by some estimates were up to 300,000.

Some Indian Ocean communities were so close to the epicenter of the tsunami-triggering earthquake near Sumatra, Indonesia that no warning could have been generated in time to save them.

Tsunamis travel at jetliner speed, and waves began pounding beaches in Thailand within an hour of the quake. But even at that speed, the tsunami took 2 hours to reach Sri Lanka and India and 7 hours to arrive in Kenya and other East African nations. Tens of thousands died in waves that arrived hours after the earthquake.

Despite the time lag, officials at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu were unable to issue an effective warning, a lapse that was well documented by journalists at the time.

Knowing why an alert wasn’t issued may help local authorities find holes in their own planning for future Sacramento Valley flood disasters.

The problem in 2004 was that scientists and officials involved in the U.S. tsunami warning system had become so reliant on high-tech devices – floating buoys, other ocean sensors and satellites – that they lost sight of low-tech methods to send a warning.

One globalization expert later observed that with modern communications, “the information of an impending disaster could have been sent round the world in a matter of minutes, by email, by telephone, by fax, not to mention by satellite television.”

Had officials played “what-if” with enough intensity, they might have found the flaws in their high-tech plan and realized that a single telephone call – to the Associated Press, for example – could produce an instantaneous news alert that would be picked up by CNN, Reuters, the BBC and other networks with links into the Indian Ocean region.

Officials thought they had prepared for every contingency in 2004, but the one telephone call that could have saved perhaps a hundred thousand lives was never made.

Here in Sacramento, we citizens are totally reliant on professional crisis response planners to have effective communications plans in place to keep us informed and safe during the next disaster.

                     Our job at Citizens Helping Officials Respond to Emergencies isn’t to do the planning; 
                     our job is to remind the crisis planners that every plan can be improved – 
                     and that we’re counting on them to do the job right.