Sep 4, 2008

County prepares residents for disasters

Bay City News

The San Mateo County Office of Emergency Services this month will work to prepare residents for potential emergencies with a community event and a loud reminder of danger along the Pacific Coast.

The office has worked with coastal cities in the county to develop a tsunami notification system in which nine solar-powered sirens will be located in various areas and sound in the event of a tsunami, OES emergency planner Jim Asche said.

Four of the nine sirens are currently in place and sound at reduced noise levels for 15 seconds on the first Wednesday of every month, according to Asche. Residents have reported that they are unable to hear the sirens, so OES officials decided to conduct a full-volume test once each year.

Two sirens in Pacifica, one in El Granada and one in Princeton by the Sea were slated to sound for a full minute at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Asche said. Residents and city agencies will listen for the sirens and report the results, he said.

"If they bother anybody we're sorry, but you only have to hear it once a year," Asche said.

The additional five sirens are expected to be in place this winter, Asche said. All nine use computer controllers for monitoring of their systems and are powered by solar panels. Computer modeling allowed OES to determine the appropriate volume for each siren.

Residents but are reminded that if they hear the sirens at any time other than 10 a.m. on the first Wednesday of the month they should consider the siren a warning and turn on their radios for further instruction.

In addition to the outdoor sirens, the county's alerting system includes the Telephone Emergency Notification System and the SMCAlert digital messaging system, according to Asche. Residents are encouraged to register for SMCAlert to receive e-mails and text messages about local emergencies, he said.

The full-volume siren test this month coincides with National Preparedness Month, but OES's major project has been the county's fourth annual Disaster Preparedness Day.

Asche said OES has worked for about 6 months to organize this year's event, held Sept. 13 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the San Mateo Event Center, 2495 S. Delaware St.

The preparedness day began in November 2005 when county officials decided to hold the event and had about six weeks to arrange it, said Bill Chiang, a spokesman for Supervisor Adrienne Tissier said.