Placer, Yolo and Sacramento counties testing cell phone alert system Thursday
SACRAMENTO - People in three northern California counties will be getting a noisy cell phone call Thursday.
How could this call help in an emergency and what you should do if you don't get the message?
"It's going to vibrate, it's going to make a tone, and you'll see essentially pop up and there will be a test message," said Dave Atkinson with Placer County Office of Emergency Services.
Sacramento, Placer, and Yolo counties are testing the wireless emergency alert system on Thursday at 10:20 a.m.
"We never want to use it but it's certainly an amazing tool that we have because we know disasters are going to happen," said Janna Haynes, a Sacramento County spokesperson.
The drill is using two different notification systems: wireless emergency alerts, which go to every cellphone in a specific area, and regional alerts, which people must sign up for.
"You can opt-in to receive text messages, phone calls, or emails or a combination of them. You can opt-in to receive different zip codes and addresses," said Haynes.
Placer County last used the emergency alerts earlier this month during the oak fire near Colfax.
"That is our primary means for letting people know when something's happening and they need to take some action," said Atkinson.
Sacramento used the alerts during severe flooding in 2017.
"Natural disasters are not the only emergencies that we face. There's certainly opportunities for man-made disasters whether it's an active shooter or even like a plane crash or train derailment," said Haynes.
So what should people do if they don't get an alert?
"We are putting out an after-action survey that we would like people to fill out so that we have a better idea of whether people received more than one notification, whether they never received a notification, all of those things help us to better prepare the system," she said.
"We want to understand who's getting and who's not getting these alerts so that we can better understand where are those areas that aren't getting good coverage," said Atkinson.
To register for the alerts, visit Sacramento-Alert.org or Placer-Alert.org or Yolo-Alert.org depending on where you work, live, or have children in school and want to receive alerts. You can sign up for multiple addresses/devices in order to cover every geographical location they wish to receive alerts.
Officials are urging residents to take a post-alert survey to help improve communication and alerting efforts. The survey can be found here: https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/a3a8ab426fec4c9fb819f15a65696b99
