Recent events during wildfires on Maui raise questions about whether a new siren system in the North State will be effective.
Officials in Hawaii did not activate their sirens, saying some were broken, that the fire moved too fast and they didn’t want to confuse people, who they say expected sirens to signal a tsunami rather than wildfire.
Meanwhile, the town of Paradise began installing an early warning siren system this summer to help people evacuate from a wildfire before it becomes deadly.
Paradise was largely destroyed in the 2018 Camp Fire. Some survivors have been struck by the parallels between the disaster on Maui and the one they lived through.
NSPR’s Jamie Jiang recently spoke with Colette Curtis, Paradise’s recovery and economic development director, who is in charge of the town’s siren system.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. On Paradise residents losing faith with the town’s early warning siren system
I think that's a really fair question. It's really hard in looking at other communities and seeing, you know, what they go through. While the fires in Maui have a lot of similarities to what happened in Paradise. I think it's really striking. No community and no fire, no disaster is exactly the same. So there is a lot, I don't know, and I think none of us really can say about what happened in Maui. What I can say is that the sirens that we have in Paradise, that we are constructing now, all 21, will be installed in September, those were specifically designed for wildfires. So they were put in with [that] in mind having them before wildfires, when we designed the system, that's what it was for.
We never had sirens before the Camp Fire. And one of the reasons was many siren systems that exist in many parts of the country, whether they be for tornadoes, air raid sirens, or tsunami sirens, those sirens all, when they go off, have a very specific thing that people are supposed to do. And so there was concern when we were looking at sirens pre-fire, would that be something that would help the community because in a wildfire, there's not just one thing you need to do, there may be you may need to stay where you are, you may need to evacuate, you may need to evacuate to the north or to the south. So there may be additional information that is needed. There's no one size fits all, you know, the siren goes off, and everyone does the exact same thing. So that we really took into consideration now of course, during the Camp Fire, we learned that we needed a redundant system. So in case everything fails, in case, you know, the cell phone towers burned, which is what happened in the Camp Fire in case the power is out, which is what happened in the Camp Fire. When those things happened, we needed another way to notify people. And that's when we came up with the sirens.
On how the siren system works
These are meant because they also have voice capability in addition to siren tone, that is a key difference. So many sirens just have a siren that sounds. So we really needed a way to give additional information if needed. And that's where the voice command comes into play. The sirens are also meant to work in conjunction with our other communication channels. So there really would not be a scenario in which the sirens went off without any other communication. If you hear those sirens, you can expect to if you have internet to be able to go online, get more information, to turn on your radio, get more information, turn on your television and get more information. And if none of those things are available, the sirens and the education that we are currently doing with our public is to be these are evacuation sirens.
If you hear that siren, the only reason that it is activated is for an evacuation, other than testing, of course. We are testing them monthly, but for the actual sounding of the siren that is only in an evacuation. So that could be most likely for a wildfire. It could be for any other event that needs an evacuation. But that is the thing that would cause the towers to be activated would be in an evacuation order.
On the siren system’s capabilities when there’s no power or internet
The sirens are cloud based, which is internet. The good thing about that, when the internet is available, is that we can activate them from anywhere. So even if we have to evacuate our emergency operations center, which is located in town hall, which we did have to do during the Camp Fire. We can activate them from anywhere that has internet service, including our phones. We also can call a command center in another state if we need to activate those systems. Now, if we don't have internet, they also have satellite capability. So we are able to utilize the satellite capability in case the internet is not available. And when it comes to power. These are hardwired underground to the power system for electricity. However, if that does not work, they also have solar panels with battery backup that can last up to two weeks.
On the protocol for sounding the sirens
If there were an emergency, the way things work with our emergency operations center is we would begin notifying the public right away of what that situation was. And we would do that through press releases to our local media, we would put information on our website on our social media pages, we would put that information on AM 1500, which is the town's radio station that we have information on. And so those are some of the first things we would do.
If that situation became critical and we needed to notify people that they needed to take some action, then we would activate CodeRED, which some people call that the reverse 911 system. We've had that in place for many years that was in place during the Camp Fire. And so that notifies people through phone calls and text messages. So we would activate that at any point in that communication channel. If an evacuation order is issued, that is when the sirens would be activated. And that decision is made by the Paradise police chief or their designee so because law enforcement is the agency that orders evacuations, usually in coordination with whatever agency is responding to an emergency – in a fire that would be Cal Fire for Paradise – they would make that decision to order an evacuation and at that point the sirens would be activated.
So, the police chief would say there's an evacuation for you know, either this zone, the set of zones or the entire town of Paradise. That information would be communicated to the Paradise dispatch center and then they would push the button to activate the system.
On whether protocols have changed after seeing how quickly fires can move
I don't know that our protocol has changed. But I would say, you know, I don't know everything that happened, of course, in Maui. But I can say in the Camp Fire, we certainly had a fire that moved very, very quickly. And that does cause issues when it comes to communication. Because as communication towers, cell phone towers start burning and failing, that hampers your efforts. And so, you know, I don't know that that has changed our protocol, other than understanding that we really need redundant systems, which is where our sirens come in, to ensure that we use all of those channels, not just one, to make sure everyone, as many people as possible are getting that notification.
