‘There is always more to do’

Given the increasing severity and risk of climate disasters, including recent deadly floods in Texas and fires in California, it’s more important than ever to standardize emergency alert systems, Mullin said. His bill, the REACT Act, would authorize $30 million annually for field training and testing and develop text templates and fund public awareness campaigns.

“We need to be investing resources in FEMA so they, at that point at the federal level, can give resources to the localities to make this system more robust and bring some coherence and consistency and clarity to the way these systems work,” Mullin said.

Public safety is a core governmental responsibility, Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco — a co-sponsor of the bill — said.

“We have a responsibility as representatives of the government, whether it was local, state or national, to protect people’s safety, whether it’s community safety or safety in any form,” she said. “When there is a disaster, we have a responsibility to them to try to keep them as safe as possible.”

While both San Francisco and San Mateo County have relatively advanced emergency alert systems, they, too, could benefit from an increase in regional coordination, San Francisco Emergency Management Executive Director Mary Ellen Carroll said, citing recent widespread Bay Area tsunami warnings as one example.

“We had tsunami warnings that went out all the way into Pleasanton and the East Bay. That affected a lot of people. That caused confusion,” she said. “While I think we do a very good job on the local level, and we’re continuously improving. There is always more to do.”

The press conference was held directly across from San Francisco Fire Station 35 and the fire boat Phoenix, which played an integral role in protecting residents from fire during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Mayor Daniel Lurie said as he emphasized the importance of emergency preparedness.

“That boat was nearly decommissioned a couple years prior in 1987. To some, it seemed unnecessary, until the day it became indispensable,” he said. “San Francisco is vulnerable to natural disasters, including earthquakes, wildfires and even tsunamis. As a country, we have seen how failures in emergency alerts can leave people vulnerable and unprotected.”

Offering residents a clear and direct message of how to proceed in an emergency situation can be lifesaving, San Mateo County Emergency Management Director Shruti Dhapodkar said.

“When disaster strikes, minutes matter, whether it’s a wildfire barreling down or flood waters rising in those moments, people don’t need confusion,” she said. “What they need is one clear, trusted message that tells them exactly what to do.”

San Mateo County has been working on its emergency preparedness system, creating a standardized message for 40 different hazards and working to train its different emergency response agencies to utilize the system, Dhapodkar said.

Mullin emphasized that local Bay Area agencies are setting a national standard for emergency alert system, but not all localities have similar resources for the integral service.

“There is a whole host of examples where people did not get the alert in time. It cost lives. There’s a patchwork quilt of competencies and capacity out there,” he said. “There are examples of localities that couldn’t invest the necessary resources to make their systems more robust. That’s where the federal government can play a role.”