Berkeley Considers Using Sirens for Emergency Alerts

BERKELEY (KPIX) -- Berkeley city leaders are looking at the idea of installing a citywide emergency-alert siren system.

The local newspaper, Berkeleyside, reports neighboring cities like San Francisco and Oakland already have such systems. Even UC Berkeley has a siren system on campus to alert students of an emergency.

Berkeley had a warning system put in place during the World War II era but it has been out of service for decades. Now, a different kind of danger is forcing the city to consider sirens again.

"When [the fire in] Paradise happened, I realized this could be Berkeley in a minute, " said Richard Engle, who owns a home in the Berkeley Hills.

Firefighters and city leaders worry they won't have enough time to evacuate people during a large, fast-moving fire.

"As we saw in Paradise, not everybody was able to get the message and it had absolutely tragic results," said District 5 councilwoman Sophie Hahn.

Many homes in Hahn's North Berkeley district are surrounded by trees and dense vegetation. The city's Disaster and Fire Safety Commission is asking the city council to install an outdoor warning system and councilwoman Hahn supports that idea.

"The cost in lives is much too high for us to not consider additional layers of systems," Hahn said.

The early cost estimate to put 23 horns across the city is about $1.1 million. Critics of the proposal said the city should spend that money on removing dead and dangerous trees instead of wasting it on old technology.

"I think that would be better spent than erecting some hardware system which will be obsoleted as these are now," said Engle, while pointing at an old siren speaker in front of his house at Indian Rock Park.

Opponents of the system argue the city already has the capability to send out alerts and evacuation orders via cellphones, landlines and social media. But the fire department supports the system, saying an additional alert tool will help evacuate people and save lives.

"Any way you can get warning out to the public is good and just one way won't work for everyone," said Keith May, the assistant chief of special operations for the Berkeley fire department.

May and Hahn said the sirens will reach people who don't have cellphones and will wake people when they're asleep. A city council committee is now going over the proposal.