Training 190 Alert Senders, Preventing WEA Mistakes & Reaching Every Community: Inside San Diego’s Alerting System

In this episode of The Alerting Authority, hosts Jeannette Sutton and Eddie Bertola sit down with Dan Vasquez, former Alert & Warning Coordinator for the San Diego County Office of Emergency Services, to break down how one region built one of the most coordinated emergency alerting systems in the United States.

From wildfires and hurricanes to multilingual communication and accessibility, Dan shares the real story behind:

• Training 190+ alert originators across 18 cities and a county
• Preventing mistakes like the infamous Hawaii false missile alert
• Writing clear alerts using Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA)
• Coordinating alerts across multiple jurisdictions
• Reaching multilingual communities with trusted messengers
• Building the Partner Relay network for accessible crisis communication
• Creating policies and agreements that took 20 months to finalize

You’ll also hear how San Diego’s Unified Disaster Council model allows multiple jurisdictions to collaborate on warning systems, funding, and training, something many emergency management agencies are trying to replicate.

Plus, Dan explains the work of the Language Accessibility Alert & Warning Workgroup, a national initiative focused on making emergency alerts accessible to everyone, regardless of language, disability, or technology.

If you work in emergency management, public safety, crisis communication, or government technology, this episode is packed with real-world lessons on how to deliver alerts that are accurate, timely, and accessible.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Hi, I am Theresa.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

And I am Eddie Bertola.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

And we welcome you to another episode of the Alerning Authority. And as always, we encourage you to subscribe, follow, listen, and most importantly, participate in these podcasts. We want your questions, concerns, ideas, problems, pain points, and success stories so we as alerting authorities can better do our jobs and make our community safer.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Yeah. Thank you for listening, and we want to thank our valuable sponsors. HQE is sponsoring this episode. They're a disabled veteran-owned and full service solutions provider. They're an IPOS-approved alert origination software provider as well. And they have specialized cutting-edge life safety and electronic security solutions. They're able to make premium emergency and security technologies accessible to you and to me to help our diverse communities and organizations. One thing that makes them unique is their unified mass notification approach. It means all of your outdoor sirens, your indoor notifications, any electronic mass notifications that you send can all be integrated into one software. And that just makes it easier for all of us and helps us reduce our pain points. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

So our guest today, Dan Vasquez, has worked in local government for nearly two decades. Most recently, Dan was with Human Resources Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Division, but has just recently taken on a new role as technology manager for public safety, overseeing the coordination at innovation and technological solutions for 10 departments. Previously, he drove strategic planning and operations at the County's Office of Emergency Services from 2017 to 2023, including experience as their alert and warning coordinator. Dan has served in over 20 EOC activations ranging from locally proclaimed to federally declared disasters. Prior to his county service, Dan served in various public safety roles within the city of Del Mar. And Dan enjoys volunteering, including mentorship programs, and holds leadership roles in several county employee-led nonprofits. Dan, we are really happy to have you. Welcome to the Alerting Authority.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

I feel honored. You all have had some pretty big names come through here in the last few months. So I uh I hope I hope that I don't let folks down.

unknown 2:39

No.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Not a chance. I'm so excited to see you and to talk with you. It's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

And I know we talk about this often because we we have had some pretty cool people and we have great locations that they work at. But this is stinking San Diego. Why are we not doing this in person on the beach? This is our bad. Like we agree. So if you're a sponsor out there that wants to sponsor us to be able to fly, sit on the beach, and talk, just let us know. There's gotta be one. Um but Dan, like so to open it up, I kind of have a two-part question. And one is specific kind of with your bio, um, because we all have our bios and resumes, but if you could let us know a little bit more of how you got into your role as the alert and warning coordinator for San Diego County OEM, but then part two, which is I think pretty unique to your area, um, is the fact that San Diego OEM partners differently than a lot of other areas where you guys are organized under a disaster council and that unified disaster council approach. So if you don't mind hitting at first a little bit about how you got to be where you are, and then kind of explain to everybody what's going on in San Diego.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Yeah, so you know, my career trajectory has been a just a series of um being in the right place at the right time. Uh and I'll use an example is um I moved down to San Diego from from Los Angeles, you know, about 20 years ago. I was like, I need a job. And I was touring the beach and I saw the lifeguards there, and I was like, that looks like a really cool job. Let me go talk to them and see if you know I could come in. And uh they said, sure, come on in, let's come on in for an interview. So I started working with the lifeguards. Uh then I, you know, going to school for criminal justice, was like, you know, I want to, I wanna be a you know, a peace officer. So went through the academy. Um, and then they had this like perfect timed um scenario where they were toying with the idea of creating their own little police department in the city. And so I became a beach officer through their Park Ranger Division, um, and you know, went through EMT school. Well, as you can imagine, working at the beach, let's say it's winter, let's say it's raining, there's not a whole lot of stuff going on. And so my partner at the time was doing an online course um of emergency management and asked if I would start quizzing him. And I started, you know, reading up on the topic, had never heard of it. And lo and behold, I was like, this is really cool. Maybe I should go to school for emergency management. So I went and got my master's in emergency management and was coming to the end of it and decided, well, now I need a job in emergency management. I'm gonna throw out a bunch of emails to, you know, different local governments. And the county of San Diego responded, said, come on in for an interview. Um, you know, we don't have any paid spots, but if you want to intern here, sure. So I started interning there. And three months later, a spot opened up. So I, you know, slotted right in as an emergency service coordinator. And from there, I just really started um learning a lot about, you know, our region and the makeup of things. Um, and you know, uh just a few months into being there, we actually had um a pretty large wildfire. Um, it it was federally declared. Um, and I was in the Joint Information Center uh supporting uh kind of the social media unit. And I was getting able to kind of see everything going on with alert and warning. And uh the team, Office of Emergency Services, actually at the time, this is 2017, issued their first wireless emergency alert countywide. And so it was a it was a big deal, right? Everyone was, you know, excited about this. It was a huge accomplishment. They had the tools, they had never, you know, done this before. And so I was like, you know what? That's what I want to do. Um, and lo and behold, I became the alert and warning coordinator. So uh that's kind of the little bit of background on how we even got into emergency management. But, you know, yeah, San Diego is really unique. Uh so the state of California actually has an emergency services act. So it's it's it's part of their law, right? And it says in there that a city or a county or county, you know, cities and county can create something called a local disaster council. And what this is is essentially just a governing body of the local governing bodies that agree to have emergency preparedness, right? And so they come together and um will formulate what are the what are the plans for the region, right? What are the different systems that are going to be used? And so dating all the way back to like the late 70s, San Diego went in on this and created um what they call the Unified Disaster Council. And it's a it's a joint powers agreement, and um it's between 18 cities and the county, right? So 19 organizations are signatories on this. And it's just for for folks that understand how difficult it is to get jurisdictions to sign off on something. The most recent update or amendment that they did, and I think it was like 2004, 2005, it took 20 months to get all the signatures and all the city councils to vote and approve it, and then it goes back to the you know our local elected for them to approve it, and it kind of became you know law locally. Um, and so this local disaster council, um, they have different subcommittees, one of which is alert and warning, right? So we'll and I'll I'm sure I'll talk about that. I don't want to, you know, bore people to death, but they they go into you know funding, right? So there's a budget, and you know, it's like 50% funded by the county, 50% funded by the cities, and then the the makeup of it has to do with population and um the assessed value of property. And what's really cool is then money comes into this disaster council to pay for regional projects, including our alert and warning software. And so, you know, from my personal perspective, I really think um San Diego has done a phenomenal job in this because our region is really diverse. I mean, we've we've got parts of San Diego in the city where just you know, 10 blocks, you'll have over a hundred languages being spoken, right? We've we've got the largest land border crossing in the US. We have over a hundred thousand people crossing our border um every single day. Right? We've got the beaches, we've got valleys, we've got mountains, we've got the desert. You could live, I've I've done this. I've literally gone and played in the snow and then gone and surfed in the exact same day, right? Uh we've we've got more true. This is I this was crazy to me to hear that the Senio County actually has more tribal nations than any other county in the country, right? Um, and so we're just extremely diverse. And a part of that I think really requires that um interjurisdictional coordination, which we have through that disaster council.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

So I I mean, obviously that's a lot of partners. Are there any best practices for trying to coordinate alerts and warnings? Because I I think we could point to different examples that have happened recently and some in the past where you have a county who has the ability to send out alerts and warnings, and you have jurisdictions within, and there can be conflict. And again, it's not intentional, and we're not saying that anything ever is in this area, but intentional or not, it it can create that conflict and that that misunderstanding, information not going where it needs to. How do you guys work around that? And it's does does every jurisdiction or partner have access to your the same, the same like operating system, anti-pause? Do they have access to your stuff? How does it work?

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Yeah, um, and you know, in in San Diego, we we didn't always give everyone access to everything, right? It was a definitely an evolution. Um just as wireless emergency alerts were evolving, we were trying to keep up on the governance side of it. And so really, it's always been about relationships. Um, you know, San Diego has had our fair share of really, really bad events. Um, you know, 2003, 2007, we had wildfires that just, you know, for a very long time held state records for largest and costliest and most deadly. Um, and so from those in you know, the early 2000s, our emergency managers, our, you know, utilities, fire, law enforcement, they all came together and realized that it's the relationships that are going to make or break a disaster response and recovery process. And so coming together, you know, we've got, you know, I mentioned the Unified Disaster Council. There's subcommittees, multiple subcommittees, including, you know, the alert and warning. We have an evacuational working group, we've got emergency manager working groups, we have an access and functional needs working group. Um, and so, you know, getting the right stakeholders to the table way ahead of disaster, um, I think has really truly put San Diego in a position where something like this works. And so bringing everybody to the table, we decided we needed a memorandum of agreement, right? Yes, we have the Joint Powers Authority that says we're going to govern ourselves in emergency management space. But when it comes to alert and warning, like we knew we needed something concrete in writing that everyone agreed upon. And it it defines the systems, um, you know, it outlines the policy, right? When to use it, when not to use it, you know, when is the emergency alert system broadcast authorized to use in the region? When is a wireless emergency alert? When is our, you know, um community emergency notification system, right? The opt-in piece of it, right? Websites, social media, all of that is outlined in this in this um memorandum of agreement. And then on top of that, it even outlines what the communication expectations are gonna be for the jurisdictions, right? So, what is that expectation gonna be for your neighboring city or the county or the public, right? Um, and we cover being multimodal and ensuring that we're using the appropriate tools for the size and scope of a disaster. I mean, it covers training, security access. Um, and and I will I will tell you this is one of the biggest selling points that um helped and get this MOA across, you know, the finish line with these cities is um we had our you know attorneys, our council put in um with with their city attorneys this kind of defense and indemnification piece. And that really, I think sold it for the electeds. Um, essentially saying, hey, if something goes wrong, like the and and it was the city that it was in the city's jurisdiction, then the county's got your back. Like we're gonna we're gonna go through this together. And if something happened and it was in the county's jurisdiction, the city's gonna have the county's back and we're gonna go through this together. And I think that really um sold a lot of folks into going into some like formal agreement through this. But um, to to your question, how many, you know, does everybody have access to everything? Um, I just checked with the current alert and warning coordinator about a week ago. Um, 192 public safety professionals have access to send a WIA today. That is a lot of people. Um yeah, when I heard that number, I was thinking it was like uh maybe almost 100, but almost 200 folks can send that out to the communities all through the same system, right? And we have different, you know, guiding every everybody's got a plan, right? And we have different plans um, including, you know, uh uh communication and warning systems, um, annex within our emergency operations plan, we, you know, one that's specifically for emergency communication. Um, and these are all adopted and approved by that disaster council and then the elected body uh that we have here in San Diego.

unknown 15:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

I think is that appropriate to say wow?

SPEAKER_02 15:25

I think so. I I am positive that there are some people who are listening to this thinking, like, how do I do that? All of the things you just described, the amount of effort that must have been required and the time and investment to get everyone on the same page, to get everyone in agreement. And it doesn't even sound like they have to be identical agreements or identical documents. It's just you have to agree that each place has their document and understand how each each jurisdiction is going to approach this topic. So you have, and it takes away the mystery of it. Like you don't, you don't wonder, oh, what's my neighbor gonna do this time? It's you know because you practice together, you trained, you've come together and had created these agreements and um like just tremendous, tremendous effort. And um, I know in in in just a minute, Eddie's gonna ask you, we have our questions in front of us, of course, for the audiences listening. Eddie's gonna ask you a question about training, because that's super that is the next question. I'm sure people are like, How do you how did you train 190 people? Um, but before we get there, I want to go back a little bit in history because as we were planning for this conversation, you told me a little bit about those earliest days when in 2017, when you guys sent the first wireless emergency alert. Um, that meant that it was 90 characters long. We hadn't moved to Wia 2.0 or WIA 3.0 yet. Um, but you had San Diego had already created a plan and a process and even defined what the message would look like for that 90 character message. And then things changed over time. But like, can you talk to us about that that first message? Like what how did you guys figure it out? Because there was no real guidance out there yet. Like, but you did it.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Yeah, you know, um when that message went out, it was what the National Weather Service um was telling us was a purple flag um Santa Ana wind event. And so for for those that are familiar with, you know, the Santa Ana winds, um, east winds, the Diablos, you know, whatever your area calls them, um, sometimes you get a red flag warning. And that means that the the winds, the humidity, the temperature, right, all the conditions are just ripe for critical fire danger, um, to a point where, you know, if any fire starts, it is gonna be really bad and difficult to contain. Um, so that's a red flag warning. And we were told that, you know, on this December set of days, that it would be unprecedented and they were gonna call it a purple flag warning. And so everyone was, we activated our emergency operations center um just because of the the event. Like there was no active disaster, but because we were um in a you know, uh a posturing um uh just in case, we were ready for that. And when the a fire did kick off, uh, it was bad and it was fast. I mean, within an hour, it had already burned through from where it started on the side of the freeway up through 100 homes, just the lightning quick. And so, you know, sending out this wireless emergency alert, again, 90 characters, it was to it was basically there are fires going on right now in like the northern part of the county, like turn to media. And that's pretty much it, right? And to your point, there was no guidance on how to do things. Um, but from that, we had a few lessons learned. Um, and we kind of uh, and and I don't know where this came from because I wasn't the alert and warning coordinator at this exact moment yet, but we built out a um a wireless emergency alert request form on a piece of paper. And it essentially had five things that we were telling people what they needed to do. They needed to say who's sending the message, right? You're all familiar with this, it's sounding really familiar. Um, what's what's happening, where is it happening, what you want them to do about it, and then where they can go for more information, right? So it's it's a little different than I think what the the current standard is, but you know, we have this as a new request tool because at the time, um, only two entities had access to send a wireless emergency, and that was the county office of emergency services and the sheriff communications center, which is actually housed just on top of the second floor of our EOC. And so um, you know, we're really excited. We we put this out. Um, the sheriff's department thought it was so cool. They decided to um build their own mobile app, right? So they called it the art mobile app. It was the alert request tool. It's literally just a digital version of the paper form with 90 little boxes that someone could go in and and you know, um, you know, T-Rex type uh a message, they click the send, it would get sent all automatically to um the SheriffCom Center and um OES so that we can go ahead and type it into the system and and send it out. Um, and then we heard Wii A 2.0 is coming. We're gonna get 360 characters. And, you know, I I will tell you, when you get really good at sending a 90 character message, 360 characters feels like an essay. Like you just have all the space in the world to really formulate what this is. Um, you know, and and you're putting like clickable URLs and stuff. And so um, we updated the form. Um, we now created a box, an area for 90 little boxes and an area for 360 boxes. And, you know, we trained the jurisdictions on, hey, here's your form. If you need to send this out, you gotta, you know, put it in, you gotta sign it, who's the responsible, you know, authority, you know, take a picture of it, whatever, send it in, and we'll go ahead and disseminate that. And then right around the time we a 3.0 was being proposed, or or was kind of on the horizon, which was allegedly to reduce the bleed over down to a tenth of a mile, that's when we started having the conversation of updating the memorandum of agreement to give jurisdictions access. You know, we figured, hey, if a s because at the time, right before the one tenth of a mile, the idea was if you send a wireless emergency alert, it's it's going to the whole county. Like that's what you should expect is that it's it's like an emergency alert system broadcast. Expect it to go everywhere. Um, but when they were talking about the one tenth of a mile, we're immediately like, let's give folks access, let's update the memorandum of agreement. Little did we know that the testing of a tenth of a mile, um, I think to this day, is still not quite where it needs to be. Um, but you know, one of those things that we all work through. Um, and so, you know, we updated that memorandum of agreement and uh we we just removing the red tape, right? So if you figure filling out a paper form, scanning it, sending it to someone who then have to transcribe it into the system to then send it out, and then the whole back and forth of is this the right location? Did you mean, and there's a real example, did you mean a one mile radius or a one mile diameter? Because we have had issues in that space, right? Um, and so just removing that red tape and giving people access, but I I will tell you, it anyway, and we'll get into the training case, but that was hard. Like it, it was hard to convince folks to take on that level of responsibility, right? Like if if I'm a city, you're really gonna have to convince me why am I gonna, you know, accept this level of responsibility if the county is already doing it for me. Um, and and so we'll we'll kind of we'll we'll get in that in a little bit, but um yeah, I'll pause there.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

It's so interesting to hear from the organizations that started with Wii up way back when and hearing your your challenges and your growth over time. And I'm really curious to learn more about the organization's reluctance to accept that responsibility. I suspect that part of it is not having to um uh be the one who says, yeah, that was my message. But you know, we've heard so many times from emergency managers that one of their biggest pain points is thinking about what happened in Hawaii with the false alert that went out. And like if you don't have to be responsible for pushing the button, then you know, it's it's a little less pressure. Um, so removing that from the county and kind of distributing it across all of the other jurisdictions, I could see why if that was one of the reasons that they were like, we don't want to do this, um, I could see part of it why, but giving them some control would also be to their benefit, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

No, I'm a I'm a big fan of trying to empower locals to take care of their local jurisdiction. But it has to be done correctly. Like we don't just want to give them keys to the fastest car in the world and say, good luck to you, right? Which leads to the big T-word of terraining, because you have 190 plus people who have access to this system. That that that is a huge number. However, I I know you probably have a plan in place to to deal with that. And to have to say you have a training plan is probably oversimplifying. And so I'd like to know what's the training approach for San Diego County? Um and who gets trained? Is it just the people that push the button? Or you know, are there others? Um, what do you teach them? And how do you how do you just make sure that you as much as possible can get everybody ready so when the time comes for them to send the message, that like the phrases that we use here a lot, right? That they're they're confident because they're competent at it.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

You mentioned the Hawaii piece, and and I and I want to just talk about that one for just a second because that one kind of hits close to home. And I I was um, you know, in college at the time, I was living with a family in this beach little little town, right? Renting a room, and I'm in the kitchen one day, and um, you know, the the lady that I was, you know, renting from um comes in the room in the kitchen, she's just bawling her eyes out on the phone. And she gets off the phone and she's like, my mom and dad are bunkered in their bathroom hiding in the tub. They just call to tell me goodbye because there's a missile coming. And oh my god, goosebumps. And so, like that for me, when when I would go out and train folks, like I would always bring up screenshots of you know the the the missile incident in Hawaii because it just felt so real. Um, that the impact that getting it wrong has on folks, right? It's not just a hey, sorry, we sent out a bad message, right? Like people were literally calling loved ones, telling them goodbye. Like that is a that is like that is heavy stuff that comes with that type of responsibility when you have the authority to press that button. Um, and so I would actually start that with you know a lot of my training spiels. And you know, but it's and and for those that uh that you know push the button, right? Are they they know how difficult it can be, right? It's it's not some easy, hey, there's a disaster. Um, go ahead and send the message, people are gonna get the message, and then people are gonna be safe because they took action. Like, no, there's like 20 steps to all of that, right? There's the disaster, then there's the decision to send the message, then you gotta craft it, get approval and the the reviews, and then you send it and you hope that the system is functioning the way it needs to. And even with all the WIA tests that the FCC and and FEMA and even local jurisdictions do, like we're lucky if 80% of your intended, you know, audience, like if all the cell towers are working, you're lucky if 80% of them are gonna get the message. And then you're gonna have this offshoot of a bunch of people that weren't even in an alerting area and they still get the message, right? And then when the people that were supposed to get the message got the message, can do they understand the message, right? Um, because everyone interprets information differently. So even if you've, you know, followed all the best practices on how to formulate their message, does that person, is it accessible to them, right? Do they can they comprehend it? And then even if all of the stars have aligned, are they gonna take action? Right. We have, you know, a lot of wildfires here in San Diego. And there are a lot of communities who a wildfire will start, they will get an evacuation order, you know, this is it's time to go. And they'll say, We had one of these last week. We're gonna write it out, we're fine, right? And I hear the same thing in the South. I mean, my aunt lives in Florida. Hey, hurricane is coming, right? And you have people who are like, Yeah, I know, I'm gonna write it out. I'll be all right. So you have to have all the stars aligned for this piece of it. And that just goes then to the training piece so that people understand that, you know, just because you've crafted a good message and you sent a good message doesn't mean that it's going to equate to this end result that I think is um sometimes ideated in like after action reports, right? And so all of this really, you know, from when I was doing it, um, was part of my sales pitch to folks, right? Um, and again, I mentioned the county used to have the responsibility, and now we're trying to get the cities to say yes. And so we used to do these road shows where we would physically just go out in person. They they still do it, by the way. I don't say we used to. I used to. Um, the team still does these. And, you know, they they go out, they meet the jurisdictions where they are. If it's the um local police department communications center, and I'm I'm not kidding here. And they're like, yeah, our shift turnover is at 10 p.m. Cool. We'll be there at 10 p.m. and we'll catch them at the end of their shift and we'll catch the new people at the beginning of their shift so that we don't have to, you know, um really, you know, strategize on using overtime, right? Because these folks have a job to do, right? And this is just one component of that. So we were just being as flexible as possible, meeting people where they were. We built out, you know, very detailed, you know, standard operating procedures with screenshots, you know, diagrams. We built out these little like um top 10 fact sheet about Wii is that they could put on their um their terminals, you know, at the dispatch center. You know, we would do virtual refreshers. Um, and when we contracted with our new system, you know, the one that we have today, we actually wrote into the statement of work that the contractor would come in at the beginning and do a train the trainer for all of our, you know, local jurisdiction administrators, essentially like our subadministrators for the system, so that they would be empowered to also train their own folks. Um, and then annually, you know, telling that contractor that part of this agreement is you're gonna come back down here and you're gonna do refresher trainings, right? So just trying to have as many opportunities and just be super flexible so that um, you know, jurisdictions felt comfortable, right? You you mentioned, you know, the the competence level and the comfort of doing something. Um and it's you know, ultimately it's up to the jurisdiction, you know, how seriously they want to take it and and how they want to prioritize it for their communities. Um, and you know, part of those memorandum of agreements as a fail-safe, right? The county will always be there for our local um incorporated cities. You know, the sheriff's department will always be there to support. Um, and you know, the state of California, the warning center, does an incredible job working with um counties and the operational areas of they're there to support us too, right? So if if we're having issues with our system, we could always request them to use their system. Um yeah, I I I think that's kind of how we approach training here in San Diego.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

I I mean, I love it. It's training is not easy. And the fact that you guys not only have a plan, but you're meeting people where they are, like it's that's the way to do it. Um it'd be nice if everybody would just self-initiate, right? And be like, well, hey, Dan, I I haven't been to training in six months. Where can I fit in your schedule? Right? It's you need to make it uh very doable. And that's one thing that I know we've talked about with other agencies is I have done a lot of graveyard training, right? Where I have actually trained people at two in the morning or three in the morning because that's the window that's available. And uh how else are they gonna get trained? Uh my favorite's when they get asked to stay late after shift. So they've been up all night long. They're up at like 7 a.m. and the training starts at 8:30, and you walk in and you're trying to be peppy, and you just see this whole back row of people that are in a zombie mode. But I mean, you give them grace, like they've been up all night working, but we just assume, right, that that bad word, that they'll be fine for training. So I I'm really grateful that you guys have done that and adjusted. Um so I think I just have one more, and I know Jeanette's got another question for you. But WiiA is really just one of the channels. Um, like we we've talked about it a lot today. But for everybody listening, that is not the only way that information gets pushed out. It has its limitations, it has its strengths, um, but it's not a one and done if you need to get information out to people. You're just like, hey, let's do a Wii and we're done. Um it's it's a wonderful, powerful tool, but it's in a toolbox with a lot of other tools. And so I'd love to just let you kind of open up the toolbox and tell us how do you guys find it best to reach people in your community? And then if you want to talk about partner relay.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Yeah. Um, you know, I'm I'm extremely passionate about the you know emergency communications and and risk communications piece, mostly for the uh emphasizing accessibility, right? And and you know, you just had Vance Taylor on not too long ago. You know, Vance is an amazing resource that has um, you know, been available to you know us locally in in California, but but throughout the nation, right? Just the subject matter expert for for planning with people you know with disabilities and other access and functional needs. And so in in 2018, yeah, I think 2018, um San Diego or not San Diego, but California as a whole had just a really bad fire season, right? The campfire, um, there was stuff up, you know, in the in the Bay Area. We had stuff, you know, um Santa Barbara area, LA, and the state did an audit um the following year. And this is what really got me, I think, um passionate to, and I'll go into how I got involved with the partner relay. Is it was titled something to the effect of California is not adequately prepared to protect its most vulnerable, you know, population during disasters. And, you know, I, you know, I read that multiple times and I was like, you know, took it to my leadership and was like, hey, we we need to really focus on what these findings are because it, you know, now that this is out, we can't allow it to be us, right? We got lucky, right? We got lucky that other, you know, jurisdictions were under the microscope on this one. Um, but what's to say that we would have, you know, done differently or or better, especially in this, you know, the accessible piece of communication. And so kind of in in you know, in parallel to that, we the county has um has an office of public health. And back in 2013, they actually coordinated with emergency services to do this survey for multilingual communities. And they picked eight different kinds of um languages, and they had um basically, you know, an all-day forum where they brought community members um together that spoke that language, right? They had all the interpreters there, and they just talked to them about what are your community strengths, what are the community areas that like you need extra government support with? How do you feel about the government, right? A lot of refugees um come from, you know, countries, they have a huge distrust for the government, right? And so what we we really learned a lot um in the diversity in what people are looking for when it comes to public health information and emergencies and disaster information. And so from that, they started this partner relay program, which essentially was finding trusted messengers in the community, sharing information with them so that they could not just translate it and push it out to their communities, but to also receive feedback, you know, this two-way dialogue, so that, you know, if if if they were a part of, you know, um, you know, uh a place of worship, their congregation or whatnot can come to them with questions or, hey, we're not quite understanding what this guidance means. Those trusted messengers can come back to the county. We can work with them to clarify, and they can then push that message back out, right? And so um it's not this immediate, you know, wireless emergency alert, but it is through this trusted mechanism that really gets people the information they need in a way that they can understand and therefore then take action. And it actually worked um decently well in that lilac fire I mentioned in 2017 in San Diego that that I was a part of. Um it was also used in um we had a hepatitis A outbreak in the city around 2019, which I think really uh put us in a really good position for when COVID happened the following year, um, in which they were also used, right? Giving them those um um, you know, public health instructions on how to mitigate the spread of COVID and then pushing that out. And so um, you know, partner relay, uh as of today, it's got hundreds of different organizations that are a part of it and you know, that we're able to share messaging with. And even during uh an emergency um uh operation center, like an activation during a disaster, we have a specific seat in our joint information center that is that link for that two-way dialogue back to the communities. Um and so that's that's one way, right? That that we get right back out to the community with that. But we also have um, you know, an a mobile app, an alert San Diego mobile app, um, which is also tied into our opt-in system, you know, coined alert San Diego. Uh we have a website that then um, you know, we could put in updates. So, you know, there's you know no limit to the amount of characters we can put up on the website. And these incident updates, there's an option we can do a push notification to folks' phones that have downloaded the app. Um, and then lastly, we have our vendors um application as well for when those alert and warning pieces get pushed out.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

I think that's fantastic. I get asked so frequently how do we reach populations that are not English speaking? Do we use AI? And I'm always really resistant. Like, well, you know, we in emergency management, we need to think of the whole community approach. And what you're describing with partner relay is bringing the whole community into the process of preparing your community, commute creating outreach opportunities, and connecting with people who who are really hard to reach. And um I love that you're using human beings to do that. Um, and um uh it it's again time and resource intensive, and and San Diego is really invested there. And I I think sometimes the the wondering if if the AI is the right way to go, it's kind of a shortcut, but it's a little scary. Um, it's not yet totally demonstrated. So, you know, got a little ways to go. Um, you probably hear about it in your work with law, which is the last thing I wanted to ask you about, which is law is L-A-A-W-W for people who are not familiar with the acronym, and it's language alerts and accessibility and alerts working group. Language say it, Dan.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Language language accessibility and alert and warning work group.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

Yes, yes. So law, and it's been around for a little while. I've gotten an opportunity to talk with you guys once or twice, but can you tell people what it is and why it's so important that they know about law, especially if they're concerned about these communication problems that this group is trying to solve at a national level?

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Yeah, it um, so you know, shameless plug. I'm the vice chair this year of law. So the the language accessibility alert and warning work group. Um we've we've got over 300 organizations um that are, you know, a part of this now. We're not it's we're not a nonprofit, we're not some, it's just a group of people who are passionate about accessibility and alert and warning, and we're putting them together. Um and really, you know, that's all we're trying to do. Like regardless of the language, um, you know, someone's um if they have a disability, if they don't, whatever their background is, everyone deserves that equal access to emergency alerts during a disaster. And um, right, if the if you can't access it, then you can't take action on it, right? Um and that comes with language, right? Not being able to read something or comprehend it is access. And so what we do is we just we get together monthly, we bring in guest speakers, um, they talk about you know different research they're doing. Um a lot of researchers come in and and and use this group as as sounding boards, um, getting ideas, asking what they're doing locally. And, you know, we just we share information. Um, you know, uh if if if anyone wants to join, um they could, and I don't know if if if in the comments after this we could put it or whatnot, but it's it's we could put we'll put a banner underneath you right now while you're talking about it. So we created a tiny URL to make it super easy. So tinyurl.com slash join L A W W. So tinyURL.com slash join law. Um, and I'll take you to um the the Google Sites, you know, page that we have, right? Um again, it's it's there's no membership fee, it's just this free group of people coming together to talk about it. And um, we're actually doing our first summit this year um on May 14th. And what we're gonna do is have um kind of you know a plenary session, and then we're gonna have breakout sessions based on the alerting software. So we'll have, you know, um Part of our you know community of alert originators come together that all use that same platform and have discussions on accessibility using those platforms. Um, these will all be recorded, right? So if you can't make it, um, so I think we have like six different softwares. We did a survey to see kind of what are the top ones throughout the the nation of our of our membership. Um, and then our intent, and they haven't said yes yet, but we hope, is in recording these, we'll then share them with the vendors and ask the vendors to come in the following month for a panel discussion to really talk about what they heard and how um either you know pros and cons of the systems can help influence the roadmap for these vendors. Um, so yeah, I just really excited about it, right? So would would we could always use more members. And do you want to announce when and where it is again? Yeah, so it's it's all virtual. And so our summit will be on May 14th, and it'll be virtual through the day.

SPEAKER_02 45:05

That's fantastic. I'm excited to find out your to learn about your findings from that. Um I hope that there's some really creative things that are happening. I'm sure that your members are are doing things. We always take technol technologies and adapt them to help to meet the needs that we're seeing in front of us. And um, I'm sure they'll share some very interesting ways. I suspect they might share some things that are a little frustrating. So that'll be interesting if you can get some of those vendors to come and listen. Um, but what a great way to help them to hear directly from people who are really focused in this area on accessibility. So, Dan, it's been really great talking with you. And uh, I just I think you've brought us so much history, information about organizing, and thinking about how to put together these processes to bring together 190 people from across a huge county to be unified in their approaches to alerts and warnings. So just thank you. Um, do you have any concluding thoughts that you wanted to provide?

SPEAKER_00 46:15

Uh, you know, thanks for having me. Uh, I really appreciate it. And, you know, for for all the listeners, um I I know, you know, what I shared could sound daunting, right? There's a lot to unpack there with policies and governance, but you know, you gotta start somewhere, right? You know, just you know, a little bit at a time. You know, I I mentioned that one of those agreements took 20 months to actually come to fruition, right? The between the partner relay starting in 2013 and then us finally getting like a really smooth functioning process through later disasters, you know, five, 10 years down the line. Like none of this stuff happens overnight. But if you don't start somewhere, you're never gonna get to that desired end state. And you know, it the three things I I want to, you know, really put out to folks is you know, what what is the the accuracy of your message? What is the timeliness, and is it accessible, right? Those three things I think if if you take it's like the golden triangle, right? If you take any one of those away, you've you've failed the community. And so, you know, make sure that it has all of those components to it. Um and just, you know, it's it's not easy. So keep up the great work, it's important work. And uh if you're ever in San Diego, reach out.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

We will. Thanks so much, Dan. It's great having you.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

Thank you. And if anybody wants a copy of any of your like policies or annex to use, are you guys available to like share?

SPEAKER_00 47:47

A lot of our stuff is publicly facing, so I would be happy to link and or send stuff if if people request it. Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 47:56

So thank you so much, and I know we'll be talking to you soon.

unknown 47:59

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 48:00

Bye, everybody.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

That that was such a great conversation. I loved hearing what Dan had to say. He has this historical knowledge of wireless emergency alerts, which I help I think really helps for people who are newer to alerting to understand what it was like back in 2017 and earlier. We should find somebody who was part of 2012, Wii. I'm sure they'd have some stories to share. Oh, was it you, Eddie?

SPEAKER_01 48:39

Were you part of the part of that? Yeah, I know. I'm I'm grateful for where we are now.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

A lot of growing pains and uh, you know, changes that have been made to improve the ability of Wii as to go out and to be the longer Wii as the 360-character Wii as I just so grateful that DHS invested money in doing research by scholars, academic researchers led by Dennis Molletti and a team of researchers out of the University of Maryland, where we investigated the effectiveness of those 90-character messages and they were not great. So it's one of the reasons that we always encourage, if you're writing a Wii A, to write the 360-character one, because 95% of phones today can receive the 360-character message. So you're just getting a small portion of people who still have those phones that only receive the 90 character messages. And um, it's like writing a book, like he said. Like when you have that many characters, you can really get in a lot of information. And it's very surprising how how uh how specific you can get in a message when you use all of the characters. Um I I had a couple of of following points that I wanted to emphasize that that he made at the very end of his talk. He he said three things. And he didn't talk about this earlier, but he emphasized it at the end. He said access, accessibility, and timeliness are the three pillars that you need to put your warnings on top of. I think he actually said three legs of the stool. Truly, if you remove one of those legs, your stool is gonna fall over. So your message has to be timely. You need to get it out as quickly as possible, which means training, writing templates ahead of time, figuring out how to get things approved before you're hoping to find the right person to approve things. Um, that timeliness is all based upon those decisions ahead of time. Um accuracy of the message, and that's kind of in battle with the timeliness because if you're trying to get information out really quickly, you cannot sacrifice the accuracy of your information in order to get a message out in a timely manner. That accurate information is what your trust is built on. People need to truly believe that you're giving them information that they can act on. And then the third pillar, the third leg of the stool was accessibility, which I love that he talked about the partner relay, the law working group, and other strategies to improve your accessible alerts and warnings. And those are things that I hope that our listeners will go and look up the law working group, L-A-A-W-W, and learn more about it. So you can you can improve your own accessibility within your alert and warning program.

SPEAKER_01 51:50

No, and I I like what he mentioned too, where he kind of gave everybody a little hope that he he knows that this is a lot and they've come a long way. And if you're just starting, um, I know Jeanette, you and I have talked to people who are struggling, who are that one or two-person operation, or even if they have more, but they just feel like the whole world is on their shoulders and they're not sure what step to take. And so the whole idea is you just take a step and then tomorrow you take another step and just make it a consistent pattern of growth and just keep trying to improve little by little. You can get to what San Diego is doing, it's just going to take time. Um, so be prepared for that, but then also be open to talking with people like him or or others. You can talk to us to help you get there. Um, but uh don't feel discouraged and you're definitely not alone.

SPEAKER_02 52:45

That's right. And we uh just today, on the day that we're recording this podcast, which is Friday the 13th, um, we completed our first inaugural boot camp training program where we had students from across the United States joining us. Um, some starting very early, because this is the week that we changed to daylight savings.

SPEAKER_03 53:10

Oh, I know.

SPEAKER_02 53:11

Oh so they were up at uh starting at 7 a.m., but it was still dark in Seattle. Um we had a great, great training week, and I saw people improve their ability to write messages just grow dramatically. Their confidence was just beyond my expectations by the end. And we um we're looking forward to offering additional boot camps in the future and other training opportunities. And the Alerting Authority does trainings. We also do message audits and template reviews. Um, Eddie, your experience of writing policies and helping organizations with their policies is unmatched. And so that's one more thing that we can offer to organizations that are trying to figure out how do we improve? Um, and we want to be there to provide those resources to you as alerting authorities.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

And I got to throw out a teacher highlight because Jeanette led the work group and and the boot camp was amazing. And I would say one of the highlights for me was a message that one of the students wrote that we actually didn't even get to read during class. And it was from a student that I would say would identify herself as someone that is learning, that that feels like, again, everything is on her shoulders, and so much of it was new. And her journey from Monday to the Friday, I know when I saw the message, I was just like, oh my goodness, like that that is a hundred percent what we're looking for. And I don't know if you wanted to comment. I mean, you're the professor, so oh, it was fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 54:57

We were seeing some really amazing messages that fit within the different channels that they were writing for. We were writing for WIA, we were writing for SMS, we were writing for email, we were taking into consideration audible messaging, um, and thinking about where's the research to support all of this. Um, and they wrote messages for all kinds of hazards. And today um we focused on missing persons alerts, which are not easy to write. Um, but boy, they knocked it out of the park. And it was just outstanding to see how taking a standard and systematic approach to writing messages makes it so easy to write something that is going to be effective because that effectiveness is based in the research. And I'm just really, really proud of the work that we did this week.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

100%. And that right there is why we do what we do. So thank you for listening today. I hope you want to join the next boot camp. And I'm sure you can look on the WarRoom to see when the next one is gonna be. I'm sure we'll announce it here as well. Um, there are more in the works. Thank you to those who participated because you're that much more prepared. Um, we here at the Alerting Authority believe that every second has a story, and it's our pleasure to be here to help share yourself.