Echoes Of The Past: Fixing Emergency Notification Failures Before The Next Disaster

Ashley Ahlquist, Emergency Manager At Yavapai County Office Of Emergency Management & Board Liaison For Arizona Association Of Emergency Managers

In 2013, I was a public safety telecommunicator. I was early in my career, young and still learning (didn’t know what Emergency Management was!) but experiencing the Doce Fire and the Yarnell Hill Fire shaped my career in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

Concerns were raised about notification challenges in the wake of the Yarnell Hill Fire. Many residents had not received alerts because the system required prior registration. A news article in 2014 highlighted that, while no residents were killed and there were only minor injuries, late or no notifications were a significant issue.

At the time, emergency responders and dispatchers worked tirelessly under difficult conditions, doing their best with the available tools and processes. However, with all aspects of emergency management, notification, and evacuation strategies must evolve as technology advances and lessons are learned. Experts identified the need to establishevacuation zones before a fire and to test notification systems thoroughly, among other items.

Fast forward a decade, and I am now an Emergency Manager. While researching a project in 2023, I came across the same article. With my experience, training, and new perspective from Emergency Management, I saw the same fundamental issues from Yarnell resurface in later disasters, such as the Camp Fire and the Maui Fire. Time and again, communities have faced devastating outcomes due to gaps in emergency notifications and evacuation planning.

Recognizing the need for improvement, we implemented evacuation zones for our County. Our office hosted workshops and training sessions on alerts and warnings and unified messaging with our partners. We developed notification templates aligned with FEMA’s best practices to ensure clear, accessible, and actionable messaging.

“We owe it to our communities to keep evolving. The past cannot be changed, but we will undoubtedly repeat it if we fail to learn from it”

To strengthen our approach, we brought in Dr. Jeannette Sutton from the Warn Room, a leading expert in alert and warning notifications, to review our templates. For the firsttime, we began leveraging the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), which enables broader and more effective messaging beyond opt-in notifications. Historically, our region relied heavily on opt-in registration through mass notification systems and door-to-door notifications.

In 2013, we were criticized for taking 21 minutes to send an evacuation notice. Dispatchers face challenges managing emergency notifications while also handling 9-1-1 calls and radio traffic—a difficulty seen in disasters like the Camp Fire. In my role as Emergency Manager, where I can focus on sending alerts, I’ve been able to send evacuation notices using pre-designated zones and templates in under five minutes.

We are now working on educating and using NonWeather Emergency Messages and the Emergency Alert System to broaden our messages as much as possible. With degraded cell service in some areas and a population where 18% have disabilities, and 34% are over 65 (median age 55), we must leverage all available tools – our ham radio community, media partners, schools, and more.

One of the most critical lessons from past incidents is that there is no singular solution. We must use a multipronged approach to ensure that alerts reach as many people as possible as quickly as possible, including our disabled and access and functional needs community. It is our responsibility to remain well-versed in all the tools we have at our disposal and be able to execute them appropriately under various conditions. Residents won’t care about jurisdictional boundaries, politics, or egos; they’ll care about whether we did the right thing for the right reasons to protect our communities.

While my team and our partners have put in tremendous effort over the past few years to implement necessary changes and have made significant progress, I am also acutely aware of the work that still lies ahead. We must have:

• Multi-layered Alert Systems: Utilize IPAWS, opt-in, doorto-door, social media, local media, and more.

• Pre-designated Evacuation Zones: Utilize third-party systems, ArcGIS, or define in your Mass Notification Systems.

• FEMA-aligned Templates: Collaborate with local partners to establish templates based on your hazards following best practices. The Message Design Dashboard is a GREAT tool.

• Training: We all fall back to our basic level of training. Are you ready?

• Public Education: We cannot reach everyone – but we can certainly try!

• Redundancy and Contingency Plans: What happens if something fails? Have a plan. As Amanda Ripley says, luck is unreliable.

Know that the work is never done—disasters will keep testing us. Continuously evaluate, test, and improve. Learn from other disasters.

Looking back at my early days as a public safety telecommunicator, I couldn’t have predicted how much I would learn about the complexities of emergency notifications. It has shaped how I approach my role today. We owe it to our communities to keep evolving. The past cannot be changed, but we will undoubtedly repeat it if we fail to learn from it. The question is – will we finally listen before the next disaster forces us to?I believe we will.

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