The primary focus of this podcast episode is the crucial transition to the new Nevada County Alert System, which serves as an essential tool for ensuring timely and accurate communication during wildfire emergencies.

As wildfires pose an imminent threat to life and property, emergency alerts and notification becomes a crucial first step in enabling residents to take appropriate action.

Our guests, James Blattler from the Town of Truckee and Alex Keeble-Toll from the Nevada County Office of Emergency Services, share invaluable insights into the system's capabilities, including its ability to send alerts for multiple addresses and in various languages.

Links referenced in this episode:

• Nevada County Alerts
• readynevadacounty.org
• tahoalerts.com
• truckee fire

Foreign.

Welcome to 101.5 Community Conversations on Wildfire, where we help you stay safe, informed, and ready.

I'm your host, JD Haas, and this episode is called Don't Miss the Message.

Understanding Nevada County's alerts and emergency Notifications.

When a wildfire threatens a community, one of the most important questions isn't just where the fire is, it's how people know when it's time to take action.

Whether it's preparing to evacuate, checking on neighbors, or staying informed during a rapidly changing emergency, timely information can save lives.

If you've been relying on the old code Red system for your emergency notifications, I need you to listen closely.

That system is no longer our primary line of defense.

Today I'm joined by James Blatler from the town of Truckee and Alex Kebeltol from Nevada County Office of Emergency Services.

We're talking about the move to the new Nevada County Alert System.

This is a serious transition, and if you haven't registered yet, you are not prepared for this fire season.

Thank you both for being here.

And Alex, welcome to the 101.5 Studios.

Can you tell the listeners a little bit about what you do?

Absolutely.

So I'm the director of Nevada County Office of Emergency Services, which means we lead the county in all hazards, planning, preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery countywide.

Okay.

That's a pretty big job, isn't it?

A lot of responsibility.

It is.

But, you know, as someone who was born and raised in Nevada county, it's an absolute privilege to be able to serve the community in this way.

Yep.

Well, thank you for your hard work and your dedication.

James, welcome back to 101.5.

Great to be back.

Let the listeners know again who you are, what you do.

So I am the emergency services manager with the town of Truckee, and basically everything Alex just mentioned for the county, I focus in specifically on Truckee.

All right, well, let's get back into it and let's talk about why alerts matter.

James, I'm going to go to you first.

We spend a lot of time talking about defensible space emergency kits, evacuation plans, and hardening homes against wildfire.

Why are emergency alerts such an important part of preparedness?

Emergency alerts are so important because they're our tool to make sure that people get the right information at the right time, so that way they can make the right decisions during and emergency.

And it's really important part of preparedness because our alerts are only as good as our ability to reach people.

And if folks don't sign up for emergency alerts.

That really limits our reach during a disaster.

Okay, so what have we learned from recent wildfire seasons about the importance of timely information?

You know, like the campfire and Lahaina?

Yeah.

Unfortunately, we've seen far too many of these mega wildfires that have impacted and taken too many lives.

And unfortunately we've seen those in recent years.

But we do take those instances and try to learn from them, to try to improve upon them, to make sure that future incidents that if they were to impact Truckee, Nevada county or our greater area in the Tahoe area, that we are doing the best things that we can to make sure that people can make the best decisions, get to safety quickly.

And emergency alerts is really a great way to do that.

When you have chaotic, no notice evacuation events like wildfires, people have very short periods of time to make decisions and things get chaotic really quickly.

So what we try to do is try to reduce that chaos by ensuring that our community members are prepared.

Okay, thanks.

All right, I'm going to come to you now, Alex, and let's start with the big picture.

Why did we move away from the previous system and what makes Nevada County Alerts a more reliable tool for a mountain community like ours?

Sure.

Nevada county was one of 12 counties and six cities in the state of California that were impacted by this.

And so what that meant was the vendor that delivered the Code Red platform migrated data across to another platform.

To so to be clear, Nevada county was never without an opt in alerting system.

But that did present us with the opportunity to look hard at our alert and warning platform.

And ultimately we decided to run a procurement process so that we could reevaluate what the best possible vendor to deliver this service to Nevada county was at this point in time.

There's been a lot of evolutions in alert and warning platforms since then.

And as the data breach happened in the middle of the winter, where we typically have less urgency, we around emergency alerts.

It was a perfect time to evaluate all the different options.

And we ultimately landed on a backend platform called hqe.

But we are rebranding as Nevada County Alerts.

And the reason why we're doing that is we don't want the community to get hung up on who the vendor on the Back end of the alert and warning platform is it creates a lot of confusion.

Like is HQE the same as Code Red?

We want everyone to just register for Nevada county alerts so that if that platform changes in the future, it doesn't matter.

You know, you need to register for Nevada county alerts.

Now.

The platform we chose we consider to be the best option for Nevada county for several reasons.

Among them, it allows people to register for up to five addresses.

So in a rural county, you may live in one place, go to work in another, have children at school in another.

So this allows you to have a multiplicity of options for receiving those alerts about places that matter to you.

And this platform in addition will send alerts out of five different origination numbers.

And so what that means is if we have to do a lot of alerts at once, we don't have to worry about there being bottlenecks in the system.

And that could be a reality in Nevada county with a fast moving wildfire.

We've got steep topography, we have a lot of fuel.

And so that allows us both a way to get lots of information to members and to ensure that we can do that without there being hang ups in the system.

Okay, great explanation because a lot of people are wondering why, what, what's going on?

Why do I have to do this again?

Thank you so much.

Okay, Alex, has no your zone been affected by this transition?

No, your zone has not been affected.

So your zone that you know will remain the same.

All that has changed is the backend system that's actually going to be send you those alerts.

The alert should look, sound, feel the same as the previous platform, Code Red.

So you know, you can be prepared for getting that message in a very similar way as in the past.

And your zone stays the same.

So continue to know your zone.

Okay, I'm going to look over my shoulder.

You've got me.

I want to just make sure that I'm E123 still.

That's, you know, it's hard.

I mean all these zones, but I check it all the time and I even have a map over my shoulder.

It's, it's a challenge to keep all that together.

Okay, Alex, so what other types of emergencies can this tool be used for?

Yeah, so we found in the last several years that one of the toughest emergencies, at least in western Nevada county can be really heavy snowfall.

So we can use this platform to send people important information about something impacting the address they've seen.

Signed up for for a multitude of reasons.

Wildfire is the most common, but we could send people alerts saying there's a major road closure.

We could send people alerts saying there is some sort of terrorist threat in a specific zone.

We could send them alerts for something as simple as if you don't have power, we have a warming shelter.

So it's a way to convey that information to the community.

Now, we are always mindful of not sending people information on a whim that would cause them to be concerned, like why am I getting this alert?

So we are really careful about why and when we send alerts, but we can use it for all those different reasons.

In addition, our sheriff's office uses it for functions such as calling together groups for search and rescue.

So there's a lot of additional backend user groups that are far beyond what we use it for when we're communicating with the public.

Okay, thank you, Alex.

Well, I'm going to come to you, James.

Let's not use that because we pay extra for the snow over here in Eastern and maybe they will send some of their snow to us because we've had a lack of it.

All right, James, from the town of Trekke's perspective, how does this new system change the way you get information to us on the ground during a fast moving incident?

Really, there's no change on how we get information out to the public with the exception on the site that we use to enter the information and send it out.

So like Alex explained, it's really the back end platform that's been replaced.

Still we include the same information, send it over, you know, text message, email, phone call, TTY if you're hearing impaired.

So those tools are still there and you can get those messages how you need them.

What is really cool about this system, it doesn't really change how we send the alerts out, but it does improve the ability for people to receive alerts maybe if they have specific language needs.

So there's a nut.

You can choose your, your language of preference when you sign up for Nevada county alerts.

And we can very quickly have our messages translated to that language.

So that part's really cool in a good way that we can reach a number of our, of our community members.

Can you tell me a little bit more about is it correct what I just heard?

Tty?

Yeah, I believe it's Teletypewriter.

I might be getting that wrong.

But essentially it's those with hearing impaired.

So it communicates to a hearing impaired device.

So that way people can receive that information and understand it.

I Don't know all the technology behind it on how it works, but it is one of our communication methods that we can, you know, essentially click a box on how we send these messages out.

Yeah, we've never talked about that before.

That is a new piece of information I'm learning about today.

Okay, how quickly can these alerts be issued during a fast moving incident?

That's a, that's a great question.

And so really, how quickly can we issue alerts?

Very quickly.

We put a lot of time into training, developing templates to be used for a variety of different emergencies or disasters and protective actions that we'd recommend.

But I would say it's really important for people to understand what leads up to the decision to send out an alert which really ultimately impacts how quickly people receive it.

And so I guess I can go all the way back to the beginning on when an incident first starts, somebody calls 911 to report it.

There's a total response time that both fire agencies, law enforcement agencies have where it's that call processing time.

That dispatcher answers the phone, takes the information.

Usually you want to try to get that information within a minute.

And then I know coming from the fire background in my previous life, you've got turnout time.

So how quickly can those firefighters turn out to get from what they were doing to, on that fire apparatus and, and rolling lights and sirens towards that emergency?

And then you have the travel time once those wheels start rolling, you know, how quickly can they get on scene?

When you're talking about a major metropolitan area, maybe Los Angeles or San Francisco, that travel time might be pretty short because you have a ton of fire stations everywhere.

In more rural settings, like in Truckee or Nevada county, it might take a little bit longer than an inner city.

So, you know, realistically, you know, you're talking about probably at least four minutes, but it could be even longer depending on how far those firefighters need to travel.

And so right there alone, you've got, you know, seven to 10 minutes on that call processing, turnout, arrival on scene, and then they get on scene.

And now these firefighters, these police officers, sheriff's deputies have to take in that emergency, process it determine, okay, what is the hazard here?

Is there a potential threat to life or property?

Is there an immediate threat to life and property?

And if they decide that there is, that's when they reach out to the Office of Emergency Services in Truckee.

That would be our office here.

Um, if it's outside of Truckee, be, you know, Nevada county or maybe Placer county.

And that's when the request would go in to send out alert in warning messages.

And so there's a lot of buildup to that decision making to ultimately send out that alert.

So not realistic to expect an alert and warning message to go out the second the first person spots a wildfire.

But understand that we, we can get that done very quickly, especially when that decision is made to send out that evacuation warning, that evacuation order, maybe it's a hazardous materials incident to shelter in place.

Once that decision's been made, we can send that message out in a very short amount of time.

Okay.

So thank you.

All right, I'm going to let you guys decide who wants to answer this question and why people should sign up.

And I want to address a common misconception I often hear about.

Many people assume that because they own a cell ph, they'll automatically receive every emergency alert or that because they were previously enrolled in Code Red, that they will automatically roll over into this new system.

Is that true?

Who wants it, Alex or James?

I'm happy to start.

You gave us a lot to unpack.

I know.

Well, I have lots of questions.

This is your first time here, Alex, so sure.

So as far as if you had previously signed up for Code Red, are you in the new Nevada County Alert System?

So we're still asking that you go into Nevada County Alerts.

You can basically sign in with an existing account, and if your data has been migrated, you're going to get a text that tells you a code and then you can go ahead and sign in and verify your information.

And you can also go to the right hand sidebar on Nevada County Alerts and go down to update my information.

It's really important that people do that.

The other piece is Nevada County Alerts is just one tool in the toolbox.

So it is an opt in notification system, which means you actually have to opt in and sign up for specific addresses that you want to receive information about.

Now you can receive a wireless emergency alert on your cell phone related to an emergency in the vicinity of where you are with that cell phone.

So a wireless emergency alert is going to ping off of cell phone towers, and if you're in the vicinity, you're going to get that information.

It's a great tool if you're out and about.

It's also a great tool if you happen to be a visitor to an area where you're not signed up for that opt in system, you're still going to get that information if you're in the vicinity of your, some of some sort of emergency.

However, if you're next to Safeway and there's a fire next to Safeway, you might get a wireless emergency alert for that incident.

But if your home is up near Sugar bowl, you're not maybe going to get information about your home or an alert because you've registered for a specific address.

So there, there is some nuance there.

James, I'll let you take it and add in.

Yeah, I just like to stress that, you know, in emergency management we really try to reinforce redundancies.

So, you know, if the first layer fails, then the second layer there is there to pick it up.

If that second layer fails, the next layer and have these multiple layers of redundancies to make sure that we can get emergency information out.

And so just like we establish these redundancies, we want to make sure people have redundancies to receive information.

And so yes, if you're near a disaster and we sent or an emergency that's an immediate threat to life and safety, there's a good chance you're going to get a wireless emergency alert.

But understand that it's not 100% when those messages go out, it doesn't reach necessarily 100% of all cell phones in that area.

So that system might fail.

So sign up for those redundant systems and also know if power were to go out, you know, some of those wireless emergency alert systems might not work work the way that, that we'd hoped that they'd work.

We've seen that in the Lahaina fire and the Palisades where these cell towers have gone down.

And so there's lots of redundancies that we really recommend.

One of them is making sure that you're signed up for Ready or Nevada County Alerts.

That's our primary tool.

But there's other tools like NOAA weather radio.

So making sure that, you know, when we send out those wireless emergency alerts, that system we use, it's called the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System through FEMA ipaws that also at the same time sends out alerts to NOAA weather radios, goes out on the emergency alert system.

And so it's important for people to understand that you need to have those redundancies to make sure that you get that information.

And I said it before, get the right information at the right time so you can make the right decision.

Yeah, Actually, the government takes the airways away from us because that's our commitment to them here as an FM signal.

So whenever you hear us talking and then all of a sud, there's an alert system that comes over and you're like, what?

Why is that going?

That's because the government owns these airways and it just comes right across, it shuts us off.

And that little box right back there is Big Brother.

And they'll take it over.

All right, great job.

Okay, is this a new feature, the multiple address registration feature?

Is that new?

Yeah, so the.

It is.

Okay.

All right, tell us about it, Alex.

So the ability to register for up to five addresses is, is a new feature with Nevada County Alerts.

And it's really wonderful because I think as I mentioned earlier, if you work one place, live one place, have children at different schools, have family or loved ones, you're now in a position to sign up for all of those different addresses and receive information about all of them.

So for instance, I'm signed up for my home, my work, my kids, high school, my in laws and my parents so that I get information for all of those.

The other thing I really like about this new system is it's so simple.

You don't need a password, you just didn't need an email, a phone number and one address up to five in Nevada County.

So what that means is even if you don't live in Nevada county and you want to receive alerts about a specific address of interest in Nevada county, you can sign up.

So to give an example, my very good friend has a mother with disabilities.

She lives in Tuolumne county, but she signed up for her parents address in Nevada county so that if anything impacts their address, she's going to get that alert so that that way she can help triage care for her mom and her dad doesn't have to worry about that if there were a fast moving wildfire.

Hmm, that's great information.

Yeah.

James?

Yeah, J.D.

I think is probably a really good opportunity to help explain emergency alerting for these opt in systems and how they are oftentimes very specific to each agency.

So here in the Tahoe Basin, north Tahoe area, we've got Nevada county, town of Truckee, Placer county, all the different counties that surround or surround Lake Tahoe, you know, going into the state of Nevada in California, different agencies use different alerting systems.

So if we're talking about our immediate area, can't forget Placer county because it's very close, our border is very close with them.

They use A different alerting system.

So if you live in Placer county, if you work in Placer county, if your kids go to school in Placer county, you need to sign up for Placer County Alerts.

And there's a really easy tool for people to figure out which alerting system they need to sign up for.

It's called tahoalerts.com so all you have to do is go to tahoalerts.com, enter the address that you'd like to receive emergency notifications for, and it'll give you a link on where to sign up for that.

Um, we strongly recommend people in this area sign up for both, because you might receive an alert about an emergency a lot sooner.

So maybe there's a fire in Placer county that's burning its way towards Truckee.

We're quickly going to work with our Placer county partners and make sure that we're, you know, in unified command together.

But you might get notified a lot sooner by Placer county if you're signed up for those alerts.

Okay.

And during those alerts, the messaging, I want to understand and let people know the terminology that they may encounter during an emergency.

And, Alex, can you explain the difference between an evacuation warning and an evacuation order?

Absolutely.

A warning means get ready, and an order means go.

Right.

So if there's an evacuation order issued, it means leave immediately.

We do really recommend that when people receive an evacuation warning, though, that they leave means less traffic on the road, means more peace of mind that you're getting out safely and early.

Also, if you have any challenges around getting out of your house, maybe you have disabilities, maybe you have an infant, maybe you have a cat that's very uncooperative with getting in its kennel, maybe you have livestock, all of those things that might add complexity to your ability to get out soon.

If there's an evacuation warning, just go ahead and leave.

You know, just go ahead and pack your car and get on out of there.

We also really recommend situational awareness.

Right.

So it's not just about knowing what's happening in your zone of interest, where your address is, but be aware of what's happening in zones around you.

So if you're noticing that a zone adjacent to you is under a warning or under an order, you should be aware that very soon your zone could be under an order or a warning.

And so that's another way to just kind of take that personal responsibility and have that awareness.

If other systems are failing, the power's going out, you don't have cell service, at least as much information as you can gather leading up to that moment where you're getting in the car and evacuating is so beneficial.

Okay, thank you, Alex.

James, what mistakes do emergency managers commonly see when alerts are issued?

Okay.

All right.

Well, first, you know, maybe the way I might approach this is maybe eating our own a little bit.

And what I see, emergency managers maybe mistakes making with issuing emergency alerts.

And that is not sending a complete message.

What do I mean when I talk about a complete message?

It's making sure that we send enough information to make sure that the people receiving it can quickly make a decision, know what the danger is and know what to do.

Right.

And so when we send out a message, we're going to make sure we include who is sending the message, whether it's Nevada county sheriffs or oas.

Truckee Police Department.

What is the hazard?

Is it a wildfire?

Is it a hazardous materials incident?

Is it a law enforcement action that you need to be aware of?

What are the consequences of that disaster or that emergency?

So fast moving wildfire could quickly overtake exit routes.

Smoke might make it difficult to see.

So what, what are the consequences if you don't make a decision to leave now, you might see some harsh language in that message.

You know, not leaving now might result into severe injury or death.

That might be something you see in a message.

And also, what should you do?

Evacuate immediately.

If you are in this area, in this particular port part of town, you need to evacuate immediately.

So the information we include is who's sending the message, what's the hazard?

What are the consequences of that hazard?

What is the protective action you should take?

And then we'll also provide where to go, get more information.

So our evacuation zone maps on Genesis protect is oftentimes where we'll direct people because that's where we'll be updating the status of evacuations.

And so we do see in our industry, we're getting a lot better here in Nevada county, in the town of Truckee.

We put a lot of time into training to make sure that we do do send out complete messages.

And our templates for these messages are developed with a complete message in mind.

So that's our side of the house.

I don't like pointing fingers when you can't address the challenges that we have in our industry.

But mistakes that we see on the receiving end of an emergency alert is people not taking them seriously.

So we don't issue an emergency services, law enforcement, the fire service.

We take the decision to Issue an evacuation warning or an order very seriously.

We don't take it lightly.

And when we do it, it's done with the best information we have at the time, and it's a strong, strongly, strongly, strongly recommended action.

So when we send an evacuation warning, the most recent one in the town of Truckee was the pacifier behind Safeway.

The firefighters and the police officers were in unified command, working together, understanding that this fire, the firefighters were very confident that they'd be able to keep it in the footprint, but there's a potential that it could spread to.

So they issued an evacuation warning.

There wasn't an immediate life threat, but there was a potential life threat that it can be developed, and so landed on an evacuation warning.

Got that message out there.

When people see that it's important, you know, like Alex just explained that if you're someone that takes a long time to evacuate, maybe start evacuating early, that's a mistake that we see people that really need more time to evacuate, not making that decision to evacuate until you get that evacuation order.

Okay.

Yeah.

That was a challenging day with the pacifier, huh, James?

I mean, it wasn't just a pacifier, but then after that, we had a drunk driver start another fire in Eastern Nevada county, which then was a ripple effect, and electricity went out, cell phone towers went out.

The radio station had issues.

It was.

We don't know how it's going to come, do we?

We just don't know how it's going to come.

We don't.

And that's why you need to be prepared.

You need to have those redundancies in place for when the power goes out, for when there's, you know, emergencies escalate.

And they also compound on top of each other.

And so that's why you got to be prepared.

All right, let's do a hypothetical scenario and walk through it together.

It's a windy, sunny afternoon.

A wildfire starts west of Trucking and begins moving towards populated areas.

What might residents experience from an alerting perspective?

Yeah, so I think I can go back and kind of that process and what leads up to an emergency alert being issued.

And so, you know, we'll start with a recent fire that we had.

I believe it was a couple of years ago, the Royal Fire, which was burning in the Royal Gorgeous, just west of Truckee.

And if that fire kept marching, it probably would have brought it right to Truckee's doorstep.

And so what happened then when that fire first started, you know, at that time, and the firefighters were on scene with the sheriff's office.

They didn't see that there was an immediate life threat to Truckee or even an evacuation warning needed.

So no alerts were issued to the town of Truckee.

And so typically that's our threshold.

Is there a potential threat to life?

Is there an immediate, immediate threat to life?

That's when we're going to start using our alert and warning systems.

If the firefighters and law enforcement on scene don't believe that there's an immediate life threat or a potential life threat, they're not going to request that message to be alerted.

So that's one thing that people should understand is just because there might be a column of smoke, which does look very ominous, especially when that.

I know when that royal fire started, you know, I saw it here in Truckee when driving across the bypass on 260.

You know, it.

It looked.

It looked pretty ominous.

But people should understand that one, first responders are constantly evaluating what the threat of an emergency is.

And we're quickly working together for that communication.

Now that fire, say a huge wind event, gets behind that fire and really starts pushing it quickly towards Truckee.

That's when that reassessment takes place to determine that there is a potential or an immediate life threat.

That's when we're going to start using that alert and warning system and people can start expecting to see those messages come in.

And so another opportunity here that I want to talk about is tools in the toolbox we Alex mentioned we have a lot of tools for alerting.

We really recommend that people maximize their tools for situational awareness.

So watchduty app.

I know almost everybody out there knows about watchduty.

If you don't, it's a great app that basically monitors.

They have folks constantly 247 monitoring new fire starts.

And they're watching it and they post on it and they send information and updates about it.

They give you links to cameras, the wildfire cameras we have in California.

So that way you can click on a camera and see what that fire might look like.

It's not an official tool.

It's not an official tool that emergency services uses, but it is a great situational awareness tool.

We recommend everybody takes it with a grain of salt because the information on there isn't always vetted by emergency personnel, but have that situational awareness use these different tools like watch duty.

So that example we talked about, the royal fire, you know, initially didn't require any notifications or anything, especially in the town of Truckee.

But if people were to get on the watchduty app, and check it out.

They can have a better, better amount of awareness of this incident.

And so that way they can stay ahead of it and not be waiting for that emergency message to come.

They could see, oh, that fire looks like it's moving.

I'm going to make a decision to protect myself and my family.

We're going to start evacuating even before we're told to leave.

Yeah.

And you can actually watch all the air support too, coming in, which is really kind of cool.

I have to tell you.

I used to have to go to these trainings every year to get my card to be on the Wildfire front line as a reporter and carry this little bag and crawl inside this bag in case the fire turned and that my wife was like, no, we're not doing this.

And I'm like, you're right.

I don't want to do this.

I do not want to crawl in this bag ever and hold it down as the fire comes.

And watch duty has changed a whole entire game.

And the way that Unified Command comes together in these town Halls on 12 hour shift changes, bringing us the information.

The information's there, folks.

It's there.

And even as the guy that was out there, My first fire was the angora fire in 07 that I was on.

Things have changed so much.

And you brought back the Caldor and Dixie fire.

It was on the 267 bypass.

I had two plumes of smoke looking like atomic bombs, one to the north and one to the south.

It was ominous.

I got goosebumps right now.

And I was just like, man, we really got to do something.

Let's go to Alex now about the whole community.

Let's talk about the whole community.

We talked about the way that the messages are being delivered to those that are hearing impaired.

How does the system support multiple languages?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the Nevada County Alert system supports multiple languages.

When you sign up, you can actually choose to sign up in one of six languages that are likely to be used in Nevada County.

And there's just a drop down menu where you select which language you'd like to receive that information in.

Folks who are Spanish speaking should know that they can go online to ready Nevada county.org emergency alerts.

And we actually have a Spanish button so that you can access the Nevada County Alerts registration system right from the get go in Spanish.

And we also have a couple of instructional films up there, one in English and one in Spanish that walks folks through the signup process.

So we really are trying to be inclusive of the multitude of Languages that may be spoken in Nevada county and make sure that people are getting that information in the way that they need to receive it so that they can act on it.

What are the other languages?

Oh, that's a great question.

And you're going to maybe stump me there.

I didn't mean.

I'm not here to stump you.

There are so many.

There's.

There really are many, many languages that people can sign up for.

It's important to know that we do focus primarily on the Spanish translation.

So there's a couple of reasons for that.

First, there are legal obligations of us in the state of California that if there are populations over 5% that predominantly speak a separate language at home, then we have to use that language in our emergency messages.

And for us, that's Spanish.

I believe it's for Nevada county as well.

I know it is for the town of Truckee.

So that's what we primarily focus on.

And that's going to be our, you know, go to obligation that we're going to get that information out there in that language.

But the number of different languages that this system supports is endless.

And I know that this system, the hqe, is actually used with international organizations and it's been tested all around the globe on different languages and been, you know, verified and supported by people of native languages from every country pretty much that you can imagine.

Okay, thanks for jumping in there.

Yeah.

And that will be part of our test on May 28, is running it on the six languages that are predominant in Nevada county and then actually taking that back, those messages back, and verifying that the automatic translation actually lands, because that can be.

One of the challenges with translation is if you're using an automated system, sometimes it will translate directly, but it's not the way people actually speak and understand information.

And so that's kind of a key piece of it.

And like James said, in Nevada county, we primarily focus on English and Spanish.

And folks that do outreach in the community should know they can always reach out to Nevada County OEs.

And we have all of our materials translated into Spanish as well as our English.

Okay.

And James, the hearing impaired, that was tty, is that correct?

Yes, tty.

Okay.

So that's going to lead me, Alex, what other accommodation exists for people with disabilities?

Yeah, so, I mean, I think I've mentioned multiple times that one of the benefits of this new system is the ability to sign up for five addresses.

And that's a huge benefit for people with disabilities because if you are a caregiver of a person or Multiple people with disabilities.

We highly recommend that you sign up the addresses of those individuals so that you can receive information if they are potentially impacted by a disaster.

In addition, people can always call two one one Connecting Point.

They are our local partner and they will help walk people with any type of challenge through the signup process for Nevada County Alerts.

And then, you know, you layer onto that the, the ability to translate for people who can't hear and then the ability to translate into Spanish and other languages.

That's really how we're trying to hit on all the things.

But kind of back to that layered approach.

You know, opt in emergency alerts are one way for people to get information.

And a couple of other ways that we haven't touched are the importance of having relationships with your neighbors.

Right.

We talk a lot in Nevada county about find your five, and that's really about having five trusted allies who are going to look out for you.

And I think in a rural county, we can never underestimate the importance of relying on your neighbors to receive information and to receive assistance during an emergency.

And we're fortunate to have an incredible number of firewise communities in Nevada county.

And those can be great neighborhood oriented resources where a firewise community can meet the neighbors and have an understanding.

Is there someone elderly in the neighborhood?

Is there someone with disabilities?

And then they're kind of keeping an eye out for that person.

So I think that that's just such a key and important way that we often don't call out directly as a safety net in particular for people with disabilities or other needs.

Okay.

And I just want to let listeners know if you want to know more about these firewise communities.

We did a whole nother segment on this before a podcast and you can find it on [email protected] or anywhere you get your favorite podcast, Spotify or Apple.

Just search KTKE Wildfire Fire.

Scroll through and then you'll see firewise and it'll explain everything about the communities.

Yes, James?

Oh, yeah.

I just, I mean, Alex couldn't be more right about this.

You're not going to find a single disaster where neighbor helping neighbor wasn't the way a community got through it.

And so yes, we're here in emergency services, law enforcement, fire, you know, and oes.

We're here to help support our community.

But ultimately there's not enough resources that can be at every doorstep, at every driveway during a disaster.

And people need to know that one.

You're likely going to need help yourself and your neighbor's likely going to need help.

So Alex hit on it.

But I just really want to.

Really want to drive it home because it's so important.

Know your neighbors, know what their needs are and communicate your needs to your neighbors.

You might not think you have a lot of needs, but.

But if you really start to think about, what if I'm in Reno shopping at Costco when a fire hits and my child that maybe is, you know, 15 years old and can be at home but can't drive, what are they going to do?

You know, there's things like that that people really don't.

Don't really consider because it's not fun to always think about the mega disaster all the time.

I know that's our world with me and Alex, but most people don't like to think about these things.

So.

Neighbor helping neighbors.

Great.

Having those text groups, though, is even better because how do you quickly communicate with each other?

You know, maybe you're not home and your neighbors are at home.

Things like that.

You can look out for one another.

I just really can't stress enough that you should have those close partnerships with your neighbors in that relationship.

It's not always easy to have a great relationship with your neighbor, but ultimately, at the end of the day, we're all community members of the same place.

And I know in a disaster, even if that relationship might be strained a little bit, it's a good opportunity to help one another.

So really can't stress it enough.

Neighbors helping neighbors be a neighborhood leader.

You know, a lot of times it could be a tough decision to evacuate.

And as, you know, humans are we.

We think in groups.

And so if we see people starting to make a decision and we see more people starting to make that same decision, you really start to say to yourself, I wonder if I should be making that same decision as well.

And when it comes to evacuating, we really recommend be that community leader of evacuating your neighborhood.

When we send out that evacuation order, don't wait.

Go ahead and go because people are, you know, it's a big decision to leave your.

All your personal property behind, your home behind, you know, your.

Your life behind.

For a lot of people, it's a tough decision to make, but when you see others making that tough decision, you feel better about doing that yourself.

Thanks, James.

I like that.

Okay, Alex, so other than the website, are there other ways people can sign up for Nevada county alerts?

I mean, the main place we're directing people is to go to readynevadacounty.org for forward/ emergency alerts, that's where you're going to get all that information.

We have pushed that information out through all of our local partners.

So in addition to going directly to the link, either through Nevada County OAS or local partners, people can always call 211 connecting point and get that kind of hands on assistance in signing up.

We also did a virtual office hours at Nevada County OES that's up on our community resources page.

And that was really a recording walking people through how to sign up for Nevada County Alerts.

Okay, we talked about this earlier but for those just tuning in, what are about the people who are just passing through and visitors who don't have a permanent address here?

Yeah, so I really our best tool to reach those folks are the wireless emergency alerts.

So we do have that tool.

But it's important for people to know that anybody can sign up for Nevada County Alerts.

We really recommend, even if you're just coming here once, sign up for those Nevada county alerts.

And you know, if you never come back and you receive that next alert one, you know, oh, this doesn't apply to me and you can opt out of it anytime.

But we don't recommend that you do because maybe you will come back to Truckee or Nevada county or the Tahoe area.

But it's also we, we really push this information out in the town of Truckee.

I know we have good relationship with our short term rental operators and so we try to make sure that this information about our alerting system is available to people that come up and stay in, you know, your Airbnbs and things like that.

And so we do push that information out and the NOAA weather radios like I said, you know, if making sure that if you do operate a short term rental, put one of those NOAA weather radios in there so that way people can get those messaging.

Let's talk about preparedness beyond alerts now.

Signing up for alerts.

It's important, but it's only one piece of preparedness.

What else should residents be doing before wildfire season?

Alex, I mean kind of to tee off what James was saying when he was talking about neighbors helping neighbors.

What I was thinking is, is also make it easy for your neighbors to help you by having your go bag packed, by having your pet go bag packed, by having kind of all of those things pre SA stage.

Right now is a perfect day to revisit your go bag or if you don't have one, pack a go bag.

Make sure it's got all of your Important financial documents, things like birth certificates and marriage certificates, either hard copies or on a jump drive.

You know, I've got my daughter's baby shoes in my go bag.

And then I also have an entire setup for all of our pets.

So staging that set stuff now, it provides peace of mind.

It allows you to grab things quickly and easily.

And I put all of those things just inside my garage door, clearly labeled from here through the end of the fall when we get heavy wedding rains.

So that if someone has to help me and come to my house, I can say open up the garage.

It's everything in that front corner that's labeled.

That's what I need you to grab for me.

And those are the things that I'll grab for myself as well.

Okay.

Thanks, Alex.

We talked a little bit about the gold ranch fire in Verdi, but we all know our terrain.

And during that gold ranch fire in Verde, we saw cell services go down, power went out.

Aside from the digital alerts, what are the built in redundancies you were talking about, James?

And to be very clear, why it's still critical to keep battery powered radios tuned to 1 to 1.5.

We were affected too.

I want to make that very clear.

When they had the pos, I think it's called shut down.

It shut us off too, at times up on top of North Star.

So.

Yep.

Backfill that with anything we missed.

Yeah, I. I just.

I want to make sure people understand that.

I can't remember if I mentioned it before.

I. I talk about this a lot that during, like the Lahaina fire, the Palisades fire, it was still shown that these NOAA weather radios were still very functional.

And so despite those wireless emergency alerts, not being able to go about, those could go out.

So it's really important that you have one of those.

NOAA weather radios are very cheap.

You can go on wherever you like to buy stuff online, search for it.

There can be very, very cheap to have in your house As a good redundant system.

On our side, we do have, you know, the basic rudimentary ways of notifying people.

So whether it's door to door knocking from law enforcement officers or sometimes even firefighters, we can do that.

We also have a system that's called the high low siren.

Not a lot of people know about this system because it's pretty new.

It's a European type of siren that only means that you need to evacuate.

So if you hear what sounds like a European ambulance, that boo, boo, boo, boo.

Oh, gosh, I love doing that so much.

Oh, boy.

It's important for people to know when they hear that sound that they need to evacuate.

And so that siren is equipped on all the patrol vehicles in Truckee, and also the sheriff's office, I believe, has them on all their vehicles.

Some of the fire vehicles have it.

It's a great way for us to get broadcast out a hey, evacuate now.

Without necessarily going on your door and knocking on the door.

And so that'll be utilized during evacuations.

And it's a great redundant tool that's not reliant on cell phone towers functioning.

A lot of pressure on radio.

There's had an agreement with your predecessor, Womack, that if it was coming to the radio station, you'd protect the fort until you could.

And I'm running to that big piece of concrete over there.

So I hope that's a standing agreement.

If it's coming out of the west towards here, I'll stay here till I gotta go, till it's warm.

If I can feel it warm at the door, I'm gonna go out the other door, kitty corner.

I'll reassure your listeners all resources will go to where there's the most immediate life threat.

Thank God that would not be here.

Thanks, James.

Yeah.

You just answered my question.

What do you wish every resident understood before the next fire?

Yeah, go ahead, James.

It's just know that we don't have enough resources to go to every door.

So you need to make sure that you are prepared to take action immediately during an emergency.

Don't necessarily wait for that message to come.

If there's something in your gut, that human instinct that everybody has that my life might be in danger, listen to that instinct and take action for that.

Alex.

I mean, I would just absolutely echo what James says.

I like to say that as individual community members, we are the single greatest force multipliers that will result in the outcome of a disaster being successful or being unsuccessful.

Successful.

There are far more of us, you know, a hundred thousand of us countywide, and there are far less first responders.

And really the best thing we can do to support ourselves and support our first responders is be ready to behave accordingly.

Be ready to grab your go bag, be signed up for alerts, know what that means, know what action is expected of you, and help us help you by taking that piece of responsibility for yourself and for your family and for your loved ones.

Lightning round before we wrap this thing up, you've already hit on this once, so I'm going to be looking for a different answer from you.

But it's okay.

If you go back to the same answer because the one you gave and I'm not going to tell people really important.

So we're going to go to James 4 first.

What is the one preparedness action everyone should take this week?

Make sure your information is accurate in Nevada County Alerts.

And if you haven't already registered, make sure you're registered.

Alex Ditto on that.

And also go home tonight and pack your go bag.

Okay, next one.

What is the biggest misconception about emergency alerts?

Alex that they're foolproof.

That's why we ask that you have many different options for getting information, from opt in to wireless emergency alerts to having good relationships with your neighbors.

James.

That they go out immediately when the emergency is first detected.

Final question.

One message you'd like listeners to remember.

James I'm going to just repeat myself.

Sign up for emergency alerts.

Nevada County Alerts.

Make sure you're signed up.

If you're already signed up, make sure your information is accurate.

Alex Nevada County Alerts.

Nevada county alerts.

Ready nevadacounty.org emergencyalerts oh, that was great.

Thank you.

Thank you for going along with that.

Okay.

James Blattler from the town of Truckee and Alex Kibeltol from the Nevada County.

Thank you both for joining us today here.

Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks.

J.D.

Yep.

And thank you to listening to 101.5 community conversations on wildfire.

Today we learned that one of the simplest and most effective preparedness actions we can take is ensuring we can receive trusted information during an emergency.

Take a few minutes today to sign up for Nevada County Alerts, verify your contact information and discuss emergency plans with your family and neighbors.

If you would like to hear this episode of Community Conversation on Wildfire, you can find it and many more@truckeetaho radio.com on demand anytime.

Thank you for listening to community Conversations on Wildfire.

Stay safe, stay prepared, and let's keep talking.

This message provided by Truckee Fire as part of the Measure T Community Wildfire Prevention Fund.