In October 2017, the Tubbs Fire knocked out power, internet, and cell towers across Napa County, California. What kept working was a 5,000-watt AM station.
KVON's new owners went live at 2 a.m. and stayed on the air commercial-free for 23 hours that first day. The county emergency operations center fed them updates hourly, and all five county supervisors came on the air.
The Napa County Grand Jury later wrote that "it was old technology that saved the day" and gave the station special recognition. One supervisor put it plainly: "Radio became what Nixle could not be for us because of the cellular system going down."
But here is the part that should trouble us. The Grand Jury found Napa County had no written plan for using local radio at all. The partnership that carried the county through the 2017 fire was spontaneous; it was never rehearsed, never formalized, and never taught to the public in advance.
That spontaneity feels familiar to me. During Hurricane Iwa in 1982, I managed Hawaiian Electric's communications staff. The storm had blacked out almost all of Oahu, and when I couldn’t call KGU, the only Honolulu radio station still on the air, I drove to the station and to all three TV stations. That’s what the moment demanded; no plan told us what to do.
Honolulu has the same gap. KSSK on AM 590 is Oahu's designated primary emergency station, and official guidance says a battery-powered radio will be your primary source of information.
But the monthly siren and alert tests state explicitly that no drill accompanies them. Muse, the AI agent, found no standing program that rehearses the public on where to tune and no quiet-time PSAs conditioning residents to reach for the radio when the sirens sound.
Plans on paper are not readiness. Readiness is a loop, and it only works if you run it between emergencies — planning, investment, training, rehearsal, public engagement, and the repetitious drumbeat of PSAs that teach people where to turn before they need to.
Napa proved the value of the partnership in the fire. In 1982, we proved it again in a hurricane. The lesson is to build it during the quiet times.
If you carry emergency communications responsibility, here is my charge. Pull out your plan this week and read it with one question in mind:
How will you ensure life-saving warnings get through to citizens if your tech-reliant channels are compromised?
If the honest answer relies on the same phones and networks that failed in Napa, Paradise, and Kerr County, your plan is a hope, not a plan.
Fix it in the quiet, while you still can.
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