( Part Two of this story goes inside a 911 call center during the October 2007 wildfires.)
Last month's wildfires set off a mass migration in San Diego County. Entire cities were evacuated. Officials say that kind of movement would have been impossible without a "mass notification system." That's when 911 calls you. The wildfires turned out to be the first real test of the system. KPBS reporter Andrew Phelps has Part One of our story on crisis communication.
As flames raced toward the ocean, more than a half-million people got a phone call like this one.
Reverse 911 message: This is an urgent message from the San Diego Police Department. A mandatory evacuation is in order for your area. Evacuate immediately to Qualcomm Stadium
And so began one of the largest peacetime evacuations in U.S. history.
Ron Lane is head of emergency services for San Diego County. He says it was all possible because of a computer system called Reverse 911.
Lane: I don't know how we could have possibly got 515,000 people evacuated safely without any — not one citizen, despite these six very dangerous fires, got caught in a fire, got overrun by the fire, in their evacuation.
For people without a landline at home, a different system, Alert San Diego , called cell phones. But for that to work, you have to register a cell phone number in advance.
Lane: Obviously not everybody is in the system. We're relying on the data that we get from the telephone company. We did a get a few people that called us and said, you know, my neighbors got a phone call, and I didn't.
Like my colleague, Joanne Faryon, who decided to leave Rancho Penñasquitos when the smoke got too thick.
Faryon: And when I did go outside to put a bag in my car, I noticed that all my neighbors were packing down the street. So I know my neighborhood was under evacuation. I mean, it had all the signs. And I never got a call. I'm not really sure why.
Sheriff's deputies eventually arrived on Joanne's block with megaphones, pounding on doors the old-fashioned way.
Mass notification is criticized in both directions. A handful of people didn't get calls but should have. Others were evacuated who didn't need to be, like Greg McClure, who was visiting friends in Del Mar.
McClure: So my wife freaked out, and we left Del Mar, which is like, you know, 100 yards from the ocean. In Del Mar's case they evacuated the entire ZIP code, or they said that. It's sort of like, you know, it's a large net that catches everything.
Officials are more concerned about the people they missed. Four years ago, 15 people died in the chaos of the Cedar Fire. A blue-ribbon panel concluded that better communication could have saved lives. And so Reverse 911 was born. The system was supposed to prevent calls like this one.
911 dispatcher: Are you trapped inside your house?
Caller: No, not yet, I'm trying to pack to leave.
911 dispatcher: How old are you?
Caller: I'm 83.
911 dispatcher: OK, you're there by yourself?
Caller: Yes.
911 dispatcher: OK, is your house on fire?
Caller: Not my house, but it sure is close.
911 dispatcher: It is close?
Caller: Mm hm.
911 dispatcher: OK, stay with me…
One of the dispatchers who worked both fires is Christine Meyer. Compared to 2003, she says this year was "exceptionally smooth."
Meyer: I think the 2003 fires were a shock, were such a shock to everybody, and those were the fires where people were calling: "Do I need to get out?" That's when the Reverse 911 was put into place, because of that. That saved a lot.
Another spin-off was 211, a non-emergency hotline. Meyer is convinced that Reverse 911, combined with 211, cut back her call load.
She may be right. In the first 12 hours of the Cedar Fire, the San Diego Fire Department received 3,200 emergency calls. In the first 12 hours of the Witch Fire, there were less than half that many.
Andrew Phelps, KPBS News.
