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'I Told You So'
Reverse 911 from the Perspective of a Cell-Phone Only User
By Natasha Yetman
Editor's note: At the peak of Southern California's 2007 fire season, 22 fires were burning simultaneously in the counties of San Bernardino, San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange, Santa Barbara, Riverside and Ventura. San Diego County was hit hardest, with nine separate fires. In San Diego County alone, more than 370,000 acres burned (530 square miles), more than half a million residents were evacuated, and more than 1,700 structures were lost. To deal with the evacuations, authorities activated the new Reverse 911 system, as well as sending police officers to bang on doors and use loudspeakers to alert neighborhoods. The system worked well for the most part, but did not fully account for the cell-phone-only households in the county. Assistant Editor Natasha Yetman tells her story below. For full fire details, read "San Diego Burning," in January PSC.
I have a confession: I don't have a landline. For years, I, like most of the people under 30 I know, have been cell-phone-only and was unaware of the complex relationship between cell phones and the 9-1-1 system. Working on PSC has educated me, and that education began with a well-deserved grilling from Managing Editor Keri Losavio. What are you going to do in an emergency? What if your battery dies? What if you can't reach your local 9-1-1 center? Despite this, I procrastinated activating a landline.
According to "The Birth of a Cellular Nation," an October 2007 report by Andy Arthur, vice president of Market Solutions for Mediamark Research Inc., the percentage of cell-phone-only homes in the U.S. increased to 14% from September 2006 to April 2007. During the same period, landline-only homes dropped to 12.3%. This trend shows dramatic differences when age is considered. Arthur states, "32.3% of 18-24-year-olds live in a household with a cell [phone], but no landline, as do 27% of adults who meet the census categorization of 'single, never married.'"
The evacuations during the 2007 California wildfires suggest that the cell-phone-only population, compounded with nonstatic VoIP customers (i.e., VoIP telephone services from a cable provider that doesn't allow customers to retain numbers after moving), can limit the reach of an emergency notification system. (Note: The San Diego area has three mass notification systems: two Reverse 911 systems, one controlled by the city's Police Communications Center and the other controlled by the County Sheriff's Office, and the Alert San Diego system controlled by the Office of Emergency Sevices [OES].) When the City of San Diego activated its new Reverse 911 system on Oct. 21, only 10,000 residents had registered their cell phones online. After the fire, registration increased, reaching 25,000 by November 2007. As of December 2007, the county's Alert San Diego cell phone and e-mail alert registration, which came online during the fires, reached 80,000.
Both the city and the county have launched campaigns to educate the public about the systems. According to OES Executive Director Ron Lane, "The fact is that fewer people are relying on landlines. ... The registration is never going to be complete. We were told that Arlington County, Va., which has had a cell phone registration effort for a few a years, still has less than 30% [of the county] registered. .... There are a lot of reasons why people don't [register their cell phones], and we can develop a campaign accordingly."
Preliminary reports state that more than 500,000 emergency notification calls were made between the three systems during the October firestorm. Lane says, "I don't know how we would have evacuated so many people, over 500,000, in San Diego without [the systems]. We were also able to direct people in their evacuation route, sending them one direction or the other. It is definitely a [good] tool for wildfires."
Officials have been quick to point out that the public should not rely completely on the notifications systems before taking action. There are many reasons residents might not receive a call from the systems, including power outages and incorrect data. (See "Reverse 911 In Action," January PSC, for details.)
The Hard Way
Oct. 22 was supposed to be my first day back to work after my honeymoon. Instead, it became my first emergency, and my husband and I were evacuated because of wildfires in San Diego, Calif. All weekend, the smell and level of smoke from the Witch Creek and Guejito fires worsened in our neighborhood.
I was up at 5 a.m., jetlagged and watching the local news; Rancho Bernardo was being evacuated, and the fire was heading for the northeast corner of San Diego. At 6:10 a.m., the news announced the mandatory evacuation for our area ("everywhere North of Highway 56 and East of Interstate 5"), and we got out of there, never having had the chance to receive a Reverse 911 call. (Thank God for jetlag.)
Around the same time, approximately 20 miles northwest of my apartment, Keri's phone rings. Reverse 911, "prepare to evacuate." The call Keri answered was most likely from the Alert San Diego system, a voluntary evacuation call made that morning by the county for the city of Carlsbad.
Six hours later, when I finally had the chance to speak with her, Keri asked, "Did you ever get a landline?" It wasn't really a question; she knew the answer. Needless to say, both my husband's and my cell phones are now registered on the local systems. But we're still debating the need for a landline.
Natasha Yetman is assistant editor for Public Safety Communications. Contact her via e-mail at n.yetman@elsevier.com
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