Senate Standing Committee on Governmental Organization

Concerns about gaps in our alert system and the lack of coordinated efforts. And so we want to be able to have more coordinated efforts. And so the question that we're going to ask today is what redundancies are in place to ensure that alerts that residents receive are accurate when they need them the most.

So we know that it's far better for people to receive multiple alerts, but the alerts need to be accurate. So with the technology available to Cal OES, we need to rethink how these alerts are issued and do everything that we can.

And so I deeply appreciate everyone being here and look forward to this discussion as we move forward. We owe it to Californians to ensure that when disaster strikes, our alert system is not a point of failure. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Ransom. And with that, we'll welcome our first panel from the Office of Emergency Services. Welcome. Thank you for coming. Please state your names for the record and proceed when ready.

Good morning. Erika Baker, Assistant Director, Headquarters Response.

Good morning. David Meyer, I am the Program Manager for the Alert and Warning Program for Cal OES.

So thank you Chair Members for having us here today. As I just said, my name is Erika Baker. I'm the Assistant Director for Headquarters Response. We are grateful to have this opportunity to provide knowledge related to the alert and warning system in California.

Today, I'll provide an overview of our state alert and warning guidelines, the alert and warning system responsibilities how state, local and federal alert agencies and programs work together in support offered by Cal OES. A comprehensive alert and warning program is a critical component of a community's ability to effectively respond to an emergency.

Emergency Management leadership representing California's standardized emergency management system identifies the need to establish statewide guidelines for the purpose of enabling and encouraging the consistent, inclusive and accessible application of alert and warning best practices, procedures and protocols.

The safety of local communities requires a designated alerting authority to ensure they have multiple operators, adequate testing and training, and functional equipment and software to alert and warn all Members of the community. The purpose of an alert and warning notification is to provide critical information that may save lives, provide situational awareness for potential or emerging events.

In California, we have a redundant alert and warning systems. In addition to these redundant systems and to ensure California is prepared, California has a dedicated team of learning subject matter experts staffed in the State Warning Center 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

The alert and warning program is part of the State Warning Center and has a direct connection to local government alerting authorities and Dave Myers is here as that Manager. Specific to alert and warning, the state's role is to support local governments through training, consultation and guidance on alert and warning best practices.

The state ensures local jurisdictions have access to FEMA's Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, IPAWS, and monitors regular testing, which I'll speak to in just a minute.

The state also provides technical assistance to local jurisdictions for developing and revising emergency plans, publishes statewide standards for effective, accessible, and consistent alert and warning practices, and provides baseline training for alerting authorities and originators to ensure proper use of alerting systems.

The Standardized Emergency Management System is the formal structure that provides emergency managers common terminology and standardization for government agencies to effectively work together to protect lives, property, and the environment before, during, and after a disaster.

More specifically, aims to provide a method for information sharing and effective collaboration for resources coordination across all levels of response from local to state and federal agencies. Recognizing the impacts of the 2017 fires, an alert and Warning Specialist Committee was created and worked together to develop California's alert and warning guidelines.

The Committee membership includes representatives from Cal OES, including the Access and Functional Needs Office and the California State Warning Center. Statewide emergency response organizations include fire chiefs, police chiefs, and sheriff associations, as well as mutual aid regional advisory committees from California's 6 regions covering local government representations across the urban, rural, and tribal areas.

The guidelines are meant to provide a standard foundation that enables the development of a robust, accessible and effective and alert warning program throughout California by providing best practices protocols used by jurisdictions to serve all Californians. In May of 2024, the guidelines were updated.

One of the main purposes of the revision was making the docket more inclusive of the access and functional needs community. The Committee continues to meet on a regular basis to update these guidelines based upon lessons learned and best practices and are scheduled to meet this month.

Cal OES recognizes that local governments best understand their communities and associated risks and have the authority to provide rapid, accurate, and timely notifications. For example, they know best their ingress and egress routes, road closures, shelter in place, an active shooter, weather awareness, and critical infrastructure impacts such as a potential dam failure.

Alerting responsibilities extend across cities, special districts, counties, and multi-county jurisdictions, depending on the local governance structure. Local alerting authorities have the authority to send public notifications through the following three viable platforms. First is the Integrated Public Alert Warning System, or IPAWS.

Alerting authorities must purchase or develop a compatible software program which interfaces with IPAWS to disseminate the alert message to the public. A local alerting authority must also sign a memorandum of agreement with FEMA for access to the IPAW system. Second is the Wireless Alert - Emergency Alert, which is WEA, which is handled through wireless carriers.

The third is the Wire Emergency Alert System EAS and that is a dissemination through our television and our radios. If local governments do not use one of those systems, they can opt to use their own system as long as it is compatible with IPAWS.

It's also important to note the difference between a warning versus an order Alert Notification. Evacuation orders are, and I underscore, a potential threat to life and or property. Those who require additional time to evacuate, including those with access and functional needs, and those with pets or livestock. Evacuation orders are, and I underscore, the immediate threat to life.

This is a lawful order to leave now the area is lawfully closed to the public. An example is an evacuation or flash flood. If a local alerting authority is unable to send notifications, they can ask Cal OES for assistance through our Alert and Warning program. This is one example of how government partners work together.

Another is regular testing. An Integrated Public Alert and Warning system IPAWS member. Local alerting authorities are required to test their alerting system to ensure its alerting capabilities. This requirement must occur every 30 days. In addition, in advance of incoming events such as storms, Cal OES reaches out to local partners proactively to ensure readiness.

If partners experience any issues during the assessment, Cal OES can provide technical assistance. Cal OES and FEMA also maintain testing via FEMA's portal and monitor that. Cal OES will follow up with an Alert and Warning authority to provide guidance on how to use the system, provide notifications, and training if needed.

Additionally, the State Warning center and FEMA meet monthly and as previously mentioned, the Alert and Warning Specialist Committee meet on a regular basis. Another important component is training. FEMA requires alert warning authorities to take two mandatory trainings. Cal OES and FEMA monitor testing compliance via FEMA's portal.

Cal OES also developed an online training course to help local alerting authorities to improve emergency messages and public safety through best practices provided processes and guidance aligned with the California State Learning Guidelines. In closing, Cal OES remains too committed, ensuring that California's can receive timely and effective emergency alerts. It's a responsibility we take very seriously.

We work closely with our state, local, and federal partners to enhance alert and warning systems, strengthen coordination, and expand public awareness. While no system is flawless, we continue to refine our process, integrate lessons learned, and leverage new technology to better protect our communities.

We appreciate the opportunity to discuss these efforts today and look forward to enhancing California's emergency readiness. We're available for any questions, and thank you for your time today.

Thank you. Does that conclude the presentation? [Yes.] All right, thank you. Are there questions? Senator Rubio.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And the co chair is here. Yes, I have several questions, but thank you for your presentation. I happen to be adjacent to where all the fires were happening and the warnings, and there was a lot of confusion. And so I heard you say right now a lot altogether.

So I want to break it down so that we understand it very specifically. You know, with all due respect, I heard you say, you know, we're aiming to create and. And aiming to create and doing are two separate things at this time, given what happened in this last fire.

And I know that as chair of the Insurance Committee, I used to always say that the last five years were the most devastating, deadliest fires we've ever seen. And then comes this year, and this one is even worse. So clearly this is our new normal. We continue to see the fires raging.

We already saw New York as well, and the Carolinas as well. This is something we're going to have to contend with. And I appreciate, you know, that you're aiming to create, but at this point, I'd like to get your thoughts on three specific questions. So what are we doing?

What have we learned in terms of getting out the alerts a lot faster?

We know that in the Eaton fire, there were some people that were warned, other people that were not, and that, you know, we had a loss of lives because of the lack of, I don't want to say responsiveness, but know that is something that we need to fix.

Number two, given the fact that we were all getting alerts, I got alerts when I was on a plane about, you know, evacuating. That's something that's not going over well with some of my constituents or communities because when you send out two or three alerts, after a while you stop paying attention to it.

And that's unacceptable because we're going to find ourselves in the next fire, our community not responding because they think it's a mistake. So that I need to know. And you also stated that you are trying to educate the public and our communities to be able to tell the difference between a warning and a mandatory evacuation.

So what are you doing to ensure that our community has that information and know the difference between a warning and it's time to get out. So can you answer those questions for me, please?

Yes, I can, and thank you for the question. So getting the alerts out faster, understand we're working.

I think the timeliness and the accuracy of the messages that go out are just as important and understand that there are reasons why that we're looking forward to seeing what those after actions are and the report that Ellie is putting together because we want to work with them and with every county for that matter to make sure that we get the information out as fast as we can.

And it was most accurate. I know that one of the questions that came up is why doesn't the state just come in and give the alert notification we rely on and we work with our local jurisdictions and I mentioned in here that they know their ingress egress rates out, they know the shelters.

If we come in and say there's a fire and we send them in the wrong direction, then that might be more detrimental than sending the actual just, you know, notification. And I completely understand and respect too that there are several. It's almost information fatigue.

We get notifications and notifications and even in different areas there will be a notification that there's, you know, a tsunami coming. A tsunami coming. And then eventually people kind of get numb to it or void. What we're doing to get those.

The community and the community outreach we are working with and our partners with all of the counties also to make sure that there's a coordinated message.

We did come up with the guidelines and we're asking that to be socialized not just through government agencies, but, you know, in addition to getting it out to our maybe through our public private partnerships. I know Vance Taylor talked last week on access and functional needs and getting the information out through those committees.

In addition to that, we have our. The Committee that meets the alert and warning to get the messages out through that means as well, to make sure it's a whole community approach and it's a whole community response to.

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Rubio, Senator Perez.

Thank you. And

I want to thank you for being here today and for all the work already that your Department has been doing. I mean, Cal OES has been on the ground with us in Altadena and Pasadena nonstop for the last couple of months.

I didn't really know much about your Department prior to January, but certainly have come to know you all and your staff and have just really appreciated the responsiveness.

You know, part of the reason why I requested of Senator Padilla being present today was because of the issue that Senator Rubio flagged, which was there were many challenges with the emergency alerts and notifications that went out, particularly in the Eaton fire impacted communities, which are all in my district.

There has been initial reporting by the Los Angeles Times that even in the community of Altadena, which is an unincorporated community, it is not in the City of Los Angeles, which a lot of folks get confused. It's an unincorporated LA County.

And the west side of Altadena, based off of initial reporting, appeared to receive notifications at 3 o'clock in the morning over. The fire started around 7, and it looks as though all 17 of the deaths were also on the west side of Altadena, which is west of Lake.

And so we can see just how a disruption or a delay in notifications can literally lead to death for some. Many of these folks who passed away were elderly individuals.

You know, I have to imagine, you know, many of these folks were probably asleep, right, getting a notification like that at 3 o'clock in the morning, when in reality they probably should have been notified much sooner. In addition to that, the area that I represent is made up of a lot of small cities.

Over 19 cities in my district, it's quite a few. Some of my cities are as small as being under 9,000 people. Like the City of Sierra Madre. Each of those jurisdictions has its own emergency response and notification system.

And Altadena and Pasadena were not the only communities that evacuated because the fires, when they spread across the San Gabriel foothills, it was impacting potentially other cities. The City of Sierra Madre evacuated first, the City of Arcadia evacuated next, Unincorporated Louisiana County, Altadena evacuated after that, and then Pasadena evacuated last.

And all of those communities are located next to one another. So what you had then was, was constituents that were incredibly confused because their neighbors or people that lived right across the street from them had received notification to evacuate, but they still hadn't received that communication from their city.

In addition to that, several of these jurisdictions are under resourced. The City of Sierra Madre, because it is such a small town, they have one person that chooses to press that button to notify people if they should evacuate. That same individuals also responsible for communications for social media. And so they're balancing a lot of hats.

We know when these fires happen and when they burn, they're not just impacting one city. The Eaton fire didn't decide just to impact Altadena and be mindful of jurisdictional lines.

It's just moving wherever the wind is blowing, wherever the fire decides to move, and whether it be crossing county lines or crossing city lines, it's going to do it. And so I've really seen a need for us to come up with a more coordinated response.

And I've also had cities tell me too that they would like the responsibility of making that decision actually taken off of them because it takes resources away when they could be using those resources for something else. So, you know, I would love to hear from you a number of things.

One, how does Cal OES currently support unincorporated and smaller jurisdictions with their alerting systems, especially in times of emergencies like this one, where you're having multiple jurisdictions be impacted? What are the Cal OES guidelines for how multiple jurisdictions can coordinate their emergency alerts? We know, unfortunately, sometimes these can almost be political situations. Who goes first?

Some jurisdictions nearby might get upset with others. That did happen, too. Why did you send out that alert so early? Because they know that it has an impact on their constituents as well when they have a reaction.

What does Cal OES do to facilitate information sharing between all of the different agencies, departments, first responders, cities, counties, et cetera, that are involved in emergency response?

And how much would it cost to implement potentially a state statewide emergency alert system if we were to try to put this, you know, all under one group so that this could be coordinated and we could have one singular message? Right. That was another thing that came up.

Each jurisdiction had its own language for how it was telling people to evacuate and what it was recommending that folks do, which also created confusion as well.

Thank you. Let me make sure I answer all of these. So the current support, we do work with the cities and the counties, and we provide support when they need assistance. And like I said, we have the Committee membership that we partner with them on.

When we are asked to provide support, as we did for la, the alert warning program, the language and the lines of where they were drawn, we rely on the local governments to help provide those to us.

When Cal OES, we provided support from, I believe it was the 10th through the 30th, and we were able to send those on behalf of the county. We still rely on them to provide us the language and again, the areas of the evacuation notices, and then they actually review it before we send it out.

So that's the current level of support that we are providing, facilitating the information. And I know that we're a little bit pressed for time, so if you'll just indulge me for a moment. The facilitation of information comes in our California State Warning Center. Whether we're activated or not, they are 24/7.

The spill reports, any type of information. We have daily situation reports in these types of situations. We activate our state operations center, and we use that information for the reports to make critical decisions on resources and how to get resources Out. And I thank you for the. The comment about we were proactive in what Cal OES does.

I appreciate that. We were actually a very still knee deep in the response. And we started recovery. We started the joint field office. We had folks go down there.

We were assembling to make sure that we had that information sharing not only on the response side of the house, but on the recovery side of the house as well, to ensure that we did the best we can to work with our partners. Cost. The cost.

We would have to do some type of an analysis to see what that would mean in the infrastructure and maybe the staff enhancing the California State Warning center to really take a look at strategically of how we might be able to make that happen. So the cost.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't have an answer on that, but we can certainly discuss that. And I think I answered all of your questions. I was trying to write them in.

And so if I might just ask one more question. So if we had a jurisdiction, let's say a city that did not have the staff capability or the resources, or if that person was out sick per se, is Cal OES able to step in to provide them with support to do that kind of emergency notification? Like what.

What then happens? And. And has there been situations where Cal OES has stepped in? Is the expectation that the county is supposed to step in at that point? What is. What is the backup plan for some of these smaller cities?

Thank you for that question. Yeah, we. We actually have. And encourage the counties to have partners, counties that also border them to support them for a backup.

If they had a problem with one of their systems or something in the smaller environment, smaller, what we call sub jurisdictions within the local alerting authorities, they actually have the ability to work not only together, but if they needed the help from the state, we would certainly be able to step in and provide the same services that we did for Los Angeles County.

As long as they're. If they were a local alerting authority, which in Los Angeles there are a lot of smaller sub jurisdictions that do have that ability, we would be able to help them in a backup situation and send those alerts for them.

If they, for whatever reason, were compromised and as you mentioned, a lack of personnel, maybe they were completely involved in the disaster and couldn't pull away from it, we can step in and we can provide that help.

But again, it's important to understand that they're providing us with the information on where to alert, the message to send out, and then we're doing that on their behalf to send that out through the systems.

Senator Perez, does that conclude.

Yes.

Thank you, Senator Perez. I have Assemblymember Hadwick, followed by Senator Wahab, followed by Senator Richardson. I would just remind the Members participating we are under a time limitation and we have two more panels. So. Assemblymember, welcome.

Hi. Thank you guys for the presentation. So I spent five years running the Modoc County OES. I'm very familiar with these. I just want to reiterate that that county local control is so important because when you're giving out those alerts, they need to be specific because that local, the local people might know this road's on under construction. We can't send people that way or we know we're going to make fire camp this way.

So that local control is absolutely important. You guys have been working or. I remember years ago they tried, they were testing out all of the different brands of alert and warning systems. Has there been any progress? Because from what I remember, none of them passed the test because they all had a margin of error of some kind.

Has there been any progress? I think RAVE was ending up at the top, but I didn't know what. Right now the counties all get to pick whichever program they want.

Thank you for that question. Yeah, RAVE actually is a program that we do allow any public safety entity within the State of California to use free of charge. It's paid for through tariffs, and we provide that service to them that they can do all of their. It's important to understand too, there's two different things.

There's mass notification, which allows folks to send to their subscriber groups and people that have subscribed to receive the alerts. And then there's ipaws, or the Integrated Public Alert and Warning system, where that goes to a cell tower and anybody in the area would receive the message on their device.

And rave, if you wanted to use it as a mass notification system, you could do that today. We could set them up and we have programs for onboarding them for that.

And if they wanted to be, if they were an IPAWS person and they wanted to come in and be in a local alerting authority, we could set them up the same way so that they could do IPOs through Rafe.

And then also Zone Haven has their Genesis platform as well. So if the counties pay for Zone Haven, they have that alert. But we always tied it back to dispatch too. So to kind of follow up with Senator Perez's question, dispatch always has that button ability to push as well.

But I was in a one woman office and we had backup plans for backup plans because you never know where life is going, going to take you. But it is, incidents are so fast and this is always the part that is critiqued the harshest. I think afterwards you can never get information out fast enough.

And information is power. It's, it helps people feel comfortable. But I think those, those partnerships at that local level are so vital and they are working so hard to keep those and at every, every part of the state. And then CAL FIRE also has their ready, set, go.

That's kind of red light, like red, yellow, green light that we use typically with those warnings and alerts. So they're this, the platforms are out there. It just in the moment, it sometimes doesn't get, you know, we're all human. Right. But thank you.

Thank you, Assemblymember. Senator Wahab

Thank you. So I say this in every comment regarding the LA wildfires. I usually defer to my colleagues that are, you know, largely the ones representing that area, more familiar. But I think there's a couple of concerns.

So just working in technology, number one, the fact that not a lot of people have access to technology, specifically communities of color, immigrants, monolingual individuals, things like that. The fact that WatchDuty was an app that everyone started to use. Right. But it took time to even get that there. Right. First and foremost, I think that's problematic. Right.

So how else are people getting the information? Number two is the fact that the evacuation warnings, in some moments, they came 12 hours after the warning actually needed to be sent out. Right. I want to flag that as well.

The, the other concern is that technology is not always the most reliable when there are infrastructure burning, disasters, things like that. So I, I highlight that as a deep concern.

Plus the fact that, you know, in this area, when we're talking about, you know, even a couple days later when there was no clean drinking water in some communities, right. And people are saying, drink the water, don't drink the water, drink the water, don't drink the water.

Your reference to the point regarding local control, I do want to highlight that. And if I can speak freely, a lot of cities, and more specifically unincorporated cities, do not have the resources to meet up with the demand of modern technology and infrastructure first and foremost.

And I'm a highlight this too, because at a certain point in my life, I worked a lot with Microsoft. And the cities and counties that they would prioritize are obviously the bigger ones. Right.

So the LA, the San Francisco, the Santa Clara, San Jose, a city like Oakland doesn't actually have a direct liaison, even though Oakland is A relatively large city by all of our standards. Right. It's well known.

So a city like Hayward or Altadena or even other unincorporated areas, extremely problematic to even have somebody with a background in technology, a fully competent individual that can compete in the current market to highlight what technology is utilized, how it should be implemented, how it's going to be a benefit to, to the public.

And then the way that the software contracts, even the one that you all stated that, hey, if they wanted to kind of integrate with the IPAWS system and so forth, that takes time, money, effort, energy and know how.

And so I raise that as all the concerns that this should be out of the box available to every city, regardless of whether they have an IT Director or not, whether they have the capacity or not. But it should be a focus to have an out of the box system for all constituents across the board.

Localized, you know, your phone tracks everything you do from your breathing, your health, your this, your that, from a geographic standpoint as to which alerts take place and much more. And, and I don't see that movement and traction.

And I understand government's job is not necessarily in the tech space, but because this is about infrastructure and about safety, what are the other options? Because a lot of the, the tools out there are outdated, are highly customizable, which is also problematic sometimes. Right. Because again, you have to provide the training. So do you guys have any response on some of my concerns there?

Yeah, thank you for that question. In addressing technology in general, there are a lot, there's a lot of movement going forward right now to try to take a look at software platforms that are used for alerting and come up with a way of credentialing those individuals as being meeting the requirements that would be needed in order to support something like an alert system, an alert program that is being done at the federal level because they are the ones that are the owners of ipaws.

At the state level, we provide training and education to anybody that is looking to have that RAVE product. As long as they meet public safety as a requirement. We can do it for anyone. And we provide them with how to download their customer base, how to basically get into the system and create alerts.

The guidelines provide best practices for how an alerting program should be established and how alerts should be created, when to send the alerts, timeliness and all that.

So a local jurisdiction, for example, has to request this type of training. So you guys can provide the detailed level?

Yeah, if we find out, we would get a call from the local jurisdiction, for example, and we have from many and we can walk them through all of those things that are available to them. And most of them are free of charge on our side because we're providing the support.

And the RAVE product is also at this time free of charge through the tariffs. So if they were to contact us and said, hey, we want to put a learning program together, we would be. That's what my team does is we support that local environment.

And I appreciate that. And I'll tell you where I think there's a flaw. I personally think that there's a flaw when the cities who again struggle to hire an IT Director or somebody that is responsible and well informed on what options are available, that takes time. Right. Whether it's an RFP, whether it's research, whether it's whatever.

Number two is the fact that they would have to reach out proactively themselves and say, hey, I need this because I want this. Whereas you guys, your sole focus is on emergency response in that sense or emergency services where it should be kind of on this type of situation, top down. Right.

And then a city like Altadena or the unincorporated part in my districts. Right. Don't have the resources, period. Right. And if they are represented by a wealthier county or a poor county, concerns there if they have a true dedicated fire Department or not. So I just want to make sure that there's no gaps.

And I think that that's what I'm really trying to dig at that in the future, I'm hoping that there are no gaps because this fire spread within minutes. Acres, killed dozens, destroyed infrastructure and has a lasting impact for years. It's not going to be months, it's going to be years. So I expect a little bit more. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator, Appreciate you as always. Just a friendly reminder to my colleagues, please be succinct. That's the same with the panelists. We have two more panels patiently waiting to address us. Senator Richardson followed by Chair Ransom.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First question, when will you be providing an action item report on the system for the Palisades and Eaton fire? A report on whether you're in your opinion whether the system worked or didn't. Work or what were the problems we are working with.

I understand Los Angeles County at the Office of Emergency Management at the request of their Board of Supervisors is putting together some type of a report or like an after action.

And we will be working with them as we do with every other county after a disaster to look at our technology and the way we can improve processes.

Okay. So, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to respectfully request that we request that they come back when that action item report is complete to present to this body. My second question is where or what is the line item in the budget that this program from a state perspective is funded?

And if you don't know, could you research it and supply it to the Committee? Because I think you may need a little more help. So I want to be helpful. So that's why I'm asking, where's the line item? I'm not familiar with that, but we. Can perfect Just two other short questions.

Who determines where the lines are drawn? And as you've heard several people here talk about, some people got communication, some people didn't. Did I hear you correctly that you rely upon local government to do that? And if you do, how do they determine those lines? Is it by census tracts? Is it by zip code, Is it by area code? How are the lines determined?

I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly how the lines are determined, but I could certainly address the fact that they create evacuation zones using a lot of them, use AI products and some other things to do that so that they can basically look at traffic flow and all the other things that may happen when they alert a particular neighborhood.

And so a lot of the different programs you mentioned zone haven't. Somebody mentioned Zone Haven a while back. They have zones that are created by the application that can be implemented as alerting areas for the persons that are using that product.

But they can also hand draw or free hand draw like a polygon or a shapefile to send those alerts out. They can decide on their own, but it is the locals that decide on where it's alerted.

Okay, so I think hopefully you're hearing by some of the questions we're asking maybe some of the problems. Let me tell you what happened to me. I was flying in on a Thursday, flying into Long Beach and my phone started blowing up of a fire alert which was nowhere near Long Beach, nowhere near it.

But I do reside in LA County. And so what may need to be required for major metropolitan cities is really evaluating how do they determine the lines? Zip codes aren't going to work because in major metropolitan communities as well as area codes that could cover several cities.

And so some of where this communication I used to work in the Federal Government, I would suggest maybe considering something smaller like census tracts that are more defined in their multiple census tracts in cities so that we could get a better cut of who should actually be notified and Then last two points, I see on here that the AO is the person and you said they received training and all that kind of stuff.

My suggestion would be, are they being tested? It's one thing for them to ask, hey, I need this, I need that. But is there any annual testing that the person who's responsible can do it or is fully capable? Last point, madam, I think it's Ms. Baker, you mentioned that.

Well, we don't want to have too many messages and all of that. I would turn to Hurricane Katrina and the Maui fires in 2023. In both instances, communities are used to receiving multiple messages. And in both of those instances, the public at the point when they needed it did not respond.

So a suggestion might be considering a post message that comes out and says, thank you for your participation. We didn't, you know, we didn't evacuate this area. However, we need for you to remain continually diligent in evacuating when required.

Because it's yes, communities may get multiple messages, but you don't want to be on the back end of the one when they really needed to do it. So. So I would just like to follow up with the Committee and yourselves at a later date on some of these issues. Thank you.

Thank you for the suggestion. Also.

Thank you, Senator Richardson, Chair Ransom.

Thank you for that. I'll try to be brief and skip the preamble. You mentioned ipaws, as far as the systems need to be compatible, how are you assessing? Do you who's in compliance and who is not?

Is there like a database that says, you know, every single jurisdiction is in compliance with the system, the IPAW system that is necessary for the proper communications.

We actually. I'm sorry, thanks for the question, Senator. We work with the local alerting authorities to ensure that the MOA that they have with FEMA and ipaws in General, that they're meeting the requirements of that, which is a monthly test every 30 days.

And what we do is we build kind of, we build a readiness profile of the alerting authorities and we are able to view and monitor their activity through testing portals and other devices that allow us to see what kind of activity they've had so that when a disaster, if it does happen in the area, we can ahead of time look and see when was their last test, what did they last do?

And we do that now presently as an alert warning program to ensure that they are ready and they're capable of being able to do what they need to do should they have to press the button.

And do you have a list of every Jurisdiction and know who is there. Are there folks who are not in compliance?

Yeah. So we have 156 alerting authorities in the state and we manage all of them the same way.

We will look to see if they've tested, if they're out of compliance, we will send them an email at the end of the 30 day period and we will follow up with phone calls and we work with them to ensure we can bring them back within compliance.

Okay, and you mentioned that there is a mandatory training. Who is that mandatory training required for? And again, is everyone in compliance with the training?

Yeah, the training actually applies to the alert originators. So if somebody is going to press that button, they would have to have that training and that certificate in order to be considered an alert originator within the program. And that's a FEMA requirement for ipaws.

So we actually make sure that they've taken the training and then their credentials are actually posted to their portal in order to make sure that they stay on top of that.

Okay, thank you for that. When it comes to, we obviously rely a lot on technology. Now I'm hearing AI is part of this and we know that everyone is not able to tap in into that.

What programs or processes do we have in place to backfill for folks like the seniors who were, you know, more proportionally impacted than others? What do we do in cases where we don't have technology? How do you backfill for just ordinary people who don't have that?

Yeah, I can take that. Thank you. So we also have redundant systems. The door knocks, we can have the sheriffs go out. We can use Caltrans, signs, social media, the news outlets, there's other ways. It doesn't have to be just the alert and warning that folks may or may not be able to receive those. So there's other ways that we do get the message out.

Okay. And that's consistent. Is that a requirement that every jurisdiction has that backup system for that redundant system. So the door knocking system. And that's because as we saw in Policy and Eaton as an example, there was just like clearly not enough time to knock all the doors. Are they also like calling landlines?

I'm just trying to understand what happens if we have another high risk situation like we had before.

We utilize all of our partnerships, including our state agencies and we have folks that are in the region as well in our fire and law enforcement and they work with those local jurisdictions as well. Understanding, I think the comment was, it was the fire went a football field. I think a second and it shifted.

You know, we try to get ahead of that as best as we can. We look at weather modelings and some other things that are coming in high risk areas that a fire might be impacted.

But we do use other means of communication and that's why we have our, as I mentioned, our state operations center, our other partners that we can utilize and get that message out.

Okay, I'll try to ask two really quick questions at the same time. So some communities do testing and drills. Is there a way that we are making sure the constituents understand how these systems work? And then two, is there a way to communicate? You said that folks, you know, they get kind of that message fatigue.

Is there a way to say like this is a level one or is that being communicated like what level of alert this is when they're receiving it so that they know to how to manage their information intake.

I'm going to answer the question too. The reason I said information fatigue. This is serious and there are deaths and people, they sometimes don't take this seriously as our challenge. And we saw that on the news. There was a couple people that they, you know, I don't have to evacuate. I've done this before.

I'm going to wait till the last minute and then roads are closed or there's gridlock and people are leaving their cars.

So not to be insensitive of the comment that there is information overload or insensitive, but some people get, you know, they get the message so often that it is over, it is overload and they just don't take it seriously. And we are working on that too. We have our guidelines.

We're working, like I said, with our cities and our counties and through the Committee Members and through our regions to make sure that people do understand that this is serious and they do need to take it seriously. It might be hopefully nothing and you know, the 10 times that they received that message.

But I would rather be safe. Thank you.

Please wrap up. Thank you. Sorry, I don't know if I was speaking loudly enough. Thank you very much. In the interest of time. Thank you, Chair. We're going to invite the remaining two panels up together, take you jointly.

So for local noticing, I'd like to ask Sheriff Eric Taylor from San Benito county, also Nick Russel, Vice President of operations for Watch Duty, please come forward and join us. Thanks to our folks from the Office of Emergency Services for your patience and your participation. Thank you.

Come on up. Take Sheriff Taylor and then we'll take Mr. Russell. Appreciate your patience, gentlemen, and appreciate your participation. Sheriff Taylor.

Good morning honorable Chairs and esteemed Members of this Committee. My name is Eric Taylor. I'm the sheriff and coroner of the County of San Benito. I'm here today to serve for you as a conduit to the other 57 sheriffs in the state in regard to emergency alerting. Though I'm not an expert in this field by any means, I'm filling in at the request of the California State Sheriffs' Association. So thank you for the invitation to be here.

As a lead law enforcement official in my county, I am responsible for the message into our community in moments of crisis in concert with our Office of Emergency Services locally. In my county, OES is a separate entity from the Sheriff's Office. It is not in my purview.

In many counties, however, the sheriff also oversees the Office of Emergency Services. It's these types of nuances that make a one size fits all approach nearly impossible in our state. I serve a very rural community that is sandwiched between the Central Valley, Silicon Valley, and our beautiful Central Coast of California.

I have a national park, multiple state parks, and many federal lands under my jurisdiction, and I hold concurrent jurisdiction in those areas, which makes having a unified message even more challenging. I'm impressed that this is even a topic that has piqued the interest of our legislative body.

Communication in emergency and crisis situations is challenging, but also very important. The sheer size of California, along with its unique geography, make unified messaging a true challenge for us. Unfortunately, misinformation on social media has made this even more of a challenge on the local level.

We need to continue to streamline our processes and work to integrate systems so we can push messaging out more effectively and efficiently. For instance, in my rural county, I contract with dispatch services in a neighboring county. We use different platforms for local emergencies.

We have used Perimeter, CodeRED, Reverse 911, Nixle, and various social media platforms to message our community. If we need to send alerts such as Amber, Silver, Feather, or Ebony alerts, we rely on the dispatch center to craft the message and put it out in the appropriate platform. For larger scale events, the California Highway Patrol is in charge of issuing statewide alerts or alerts over large regions after confirming that they are appropriate format and also adhere to the guidelines for release.

It is an inherent responsibility of local government organizations and officials to keep members of the public informed about natural, human caused, and technological disasters and what actions they need to take to protect themselves and their families. Depending on how the local governments have organized and coordinated the local area alert and warning system, the local government responsibility can be inclusive of the city, special district, county, and multi-county jurisdictions.

I'm just going to skip through some of this in the interest of time. As a sheriff, my biggest issue is how I can get the message out in an appropriate platform in the appropriate time frame. Many of our social media platforms require separate accounts, separate logins, and people to monitor them as they allow two way communication.

The larger scale messaging is easier for us at the local level. That's because we merely feed the information to dispatch and they enter it into IPAWS or WEA. But for local emergencies, like a wildfire that has just started, it is more difficult to get a message out to a wide population and often remote areas where people monitor different platforms. Many people in my rural community lack cellular coverage or reliable Internet. The old copper wire phone lines are truly their only lifeline.

Also, we struggle to keep up with the folks that monitor scanners on social media and other available apps out there as well as we all have local personalities on social media who have quite a following and give updates, and oftentimes those are accurate and good, but sometimes they are not. These programs cost money.

It's a struggle for my county to pay for things like Nixle alone. Nixle and other services like it are opt in. They're used for every type of messaging, so people can get, as we've heard already today, overwhelmed with things like weather alerts, so they end up opting out. In our county, we're bordered closely by Monterey, Santa Cruz, and Santa Clara. Some of the alerting platforms go on a geographical area, so many of my residents get alerts that have nothing to do with our county at all.

Overall, I believe we're on the right track and making progress to make the public alert system as streamlined as possible while keeping checks and balances so folks don't get overwhelmed and stop listening. I feel honored to have this be my third time in front of our state Legislature in just a short couple months. I'll do my best to get you the answers you need and collaborate as we go forward. Thank you for having me here today as we look forward to implementing the most efficient ways to protect all people in California.

Thank you very much, sheriff. What we'll do is I'll take Mr. Russell next to go ahead and present, and then what we'll do following that is just take questions for either or both. Mr. Russell, please.

Thank you very much, and thank you Chair and Members of the Committee for the opportunity to speak today. As you know, my name is Nick Russell. I'm the vice president of operations at Watch Duty. We're a not, excuse me, a nonprofit, community powered wildfire alert system. We built Watch Duty because we felt like we had to.

There's always been a lag between the ignition of a wildfire and the first stream of information that comes out of that. That's usually by way of an emergency alert through one of the many platforms that have been discussed here today. The biggest challenge that we saw beyond the time gaps is the single points of failure.

In my county of Sonoma County, we witnessed that in 2017, where no alerts were sent out because the person who could press that button was unavailable to do so. And the other challenge is is the context missing and the different language that's used even between adjoining counties. So there's obviously fantastic partnerships that have taken place between counties, but there's other divides that occur over county lines. And as we all know, wildfires don't care about jurisdictions or county lines, and so we cannot either.

And one of the big things we try to do at Watch Duty is make everyone geospatially aware because what we've understood over time is cardinal directions don't come natural for everybody. So when we tell people in a WEA to evacuate everything north of Highway 80, for instance, everybody starts scrambling because that's a key word, Highway 80 for them.

And then they go, wait a minute, which way is north? And so we're trying to show them on our map where that flame icon is, where the fire is, where they are, showing them enriched layers like surface wind, so they can start making actionable decisions for themselves.

So Watch Duty serves as a vital bridge between first responders and the public. We built this to be free because talking about money in emergent situations doesn't make sense. And so our partnerships, our strategic partnerships, and relationships we have don't come with contracts or money.

They come with we're here as community members and we want to help in any capacity that we can. So, you know, with that, I've heard a lot of comments about LA, and it's been an honor to serve, and I appreciate the accolades that Watch Duty received on that. It's really been bittersweet for us. It's an honor to serve the community, but it's absolutely devastating to see the effects of the wildfire.

So our team of over 200 volunteers that are trained, many of them off duty firefighters, dispatchers, experts, monitor signals of dispatch calls, wildfire cameras, and weather data 24/7 to detect new fires and update on those within moments when seconds count.

For residents in the path of a fast moving wildfire, these early warnings can mean the difference between safely evacuating and being trapped. Families have literally credited Watch Duty alerts with saving their lives by giving them enough time to escape.

I think we heard about that from Senator Stern today, by giving that granular contextual information from the start of ignition. And you know, many times these alerts come 30, 60, 90 minutes later, and in the smaller fires, sometimes they never do at all. And so we're there to try to bridge that gap in communication.

So tragically, stories like West Altadena show that delayed alerts cost lives. And we never want that to happen if it can be prevented. Our success in closing this alert gap is evident in the community response. Since launching in 2021, Watch Duty has grown to nearly 10 million users, with 2.1 million in LA and a half a million in San Diego Counties alone. Last year, we tracked over 9,100 wildfires in our coverage area and kept 7 million people informed in real time, with over 1.1 million users relying on Watch Duty daily throughout peak wildfire season.

When the Palisades and Eaton fire hit Southern California, an additional 2.9 million people downloaded the Watch Duty app in 48 hours, desperate for up to the minute information that they weren't getting through official channels. Our wildfire updates have become so trusted that even emergency officials use them.

In the Los Angeles County Emergency Operations Center, during these fires, Watch Duty was displayed on the largest screen in the center to give live updates of what was going on in the response to those fires. We quickly launched all command vehicles in the LAFD to also enhance their situational awareness as they let us know they were getting more information from us than their internal sources.

We provide situational awareness that has never been seen before, let alone in one place. As one fire official has told us, this is his go to source on and off duty. This is not because we want to replace anybody, firefighters, law enforcement, but we want to amplify those messages as a redundant source of Nixle, Rave, and all the other platforms that have been mentioned today.

We are taking the fragmented pieces of information, verifying them through our expert volunteers, and delivering them in a clear, concise, constant stream of updates to the public. In short, Watch Duty is catching anything that may fall through the cracks of traditional systems.

I want to emphasize that Watch Duty is here to complement official emergency alert systems and not entirely replace them. We deeply respect the roles of CAL FIRE, Cal OES, and law enforcement agencies and the firefighters on the ground involved in these fires, as well as all the ones we'll deal with in the future.

Mr. Russell, I apologize. I'm going to have to ask to wrap it up.

Yeah, please. No, no worries.

Thank you very much. Apologize. In the interest of time, we're getting signal from leadership that we have a hard stop here in about six or seven minutes. I know that Members and their offices can, with your indulgence, our committee can submit requests for additional feedback or responses to you, and you can provide those to the committee. Anyone has a very brief question, and then we need to wrap. So, Chair Ransom?

Yes. Thank you. Sheriff Taylor and Mr. Russell, thank you both for being here. Mr. Russell, this question is for you. Given your experience with real time disaster information, what improvements would you recommend for the state's emergency alert system? And I should have started that question with thanking you very much for your contributions. Thank you.

Absolutely. I think the biggest thing that we need to look at in emergency alerting is the amount of context in it. Because what's happening is people are getting emergency alerts followed by law enforcement officers ensuring these people have evacuated, but they don't have the context of the real danger they're in.

And these law enforcement officers are spending an extended period of time trying to explain that danger. And so what we're doing is trying to provide that context. So if they're still there when law enforcement shows up, they say, okay, we'll follow you out of the driveway. We understand the danger we're in.

Thank you.

Thank you. Senator Perez.

Yeah. First of all, just. I want to just acknowledge Watch Duty. I mean, oh my goodness. Your system has become, you know, the one that we relied upon to get real time information on the fires. And I know many of our agencies said it wasn't the official system that they recommended for folks to use, but I can tell you every fire department in my region was utilizing Watch Duty. So thank you.

If the state were to implement an application or system like Watch Duty at the state level, are there any pitfalls that you foresee us having to navigate? Also, what do you see in terms of us looking to increase public trust in our system? Because I think that's one of the things people really feel like they can rely on Watch Duty for accurate information. I think you guys have done an excellent job of just building public trust over time and reliability.

Yeah. Thank you for your comments on that. I see very few pitfalls with Watch Duty. We built our systems to be robust and redundant. We built them for Doomsday, so to speak. So when all the other systems in Southern California weren't handling the traffic, we had 0% downtime because we've planned for these events.

The thing about community trust is right now the community trusts Watch Duty because we were giving them that granular information and we trusted people to make their own decisions because we are the people, right? We didn't gate information because we thought it was too dangerous to provide it to them.

We gave them the raw information for them to make their own decisions. And we need to trust people to do that. We can't say, oh, this is too dangerous, this is theatrical, we don't want to tell them. People need that granular information, the spread of the fire, so they understand where the danger is and that it's time to go.

And would love to talk with you further about this too. So thank you. I know we're short in time.

Thank you very much. Senator Richardson, please be brief.

Could you provide to the committee how you get your information? You said briefly listening to the radios and so on. At your convenience, if you could please provide it to the committee how you actually do that or maybe send us a video or something?

Absolutely.

Great job. Thank you for your help.

Echo that. Thank you, gentlemen, for your patience. Thanks to our co-chairs and all those who participated and the public who paid attention. Thank you so very much. Are there any members of the public who want to address before we adjourn? Please be brief. State your name for the record.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members. I'm Christina DiCaro. I'm the lobbyist for a joint venture between a company called SpectraRep and the PBS stations in the state, along with my colleague Ed Manning. I know you have a hard stop, so I'm just going to bring information by your offices.

But for the last few years, SpectraRep has been working in partnership with California's public broadcasting stations like KCET in Los Angeles, plus Cal OES and the USGS. We are rolling out a wonderful early earthquake warning system, but we'd like to expand that to fires, floods, high wind events, et cetera. We're going to work with your office and the budget subcommittees in the coming weeks to see if we can find more money to roll that out for redundancy.

Good afternoon, Chair and Committee Members. My name is Will Abrams. I'm representing the interests of 70,000 wildfire survivors from the PG&E fires who understand these issues firsthand. I just want to reemphasize some points. One, our alert and warning system is a hot mess with lots of different messages from lots of different places, confusing folks where fire departments can manage it on one hand, police departments on another, often pointing at each other.

I encourage the committee's work around these issues, but I also want to bring to the attention that there were commitments made in 2019 for PG&E wildfire survivors that they would be fully paid. Those commitments were made through AB 1054, and as legislation is working its way through the halls in terms of the Investor Owned Utility Accountability Act in terms of the new Golden State Commitments for as well, we should be looking at our commitments to 2015 to 2018 PG&E wildfire survivors. Thank you.

Thank you for your participation. Thanks everyone for your patience and participation. At this time, the joint informational hearing is adjourned.