MALIBU—The Malibu City Council are discussing ways to alert the community during times of emergency that would utilize systems that do not require traditional forms of communication.
One proposal would be to use tone alert radios, frequency modulation alerting, weather radio and national weather radio among others.
This comes after an incident where some community members did not evacuate during the Woolsey Fire because they did not receive notification due to the lost of cell services. This is one of the common outages that transpire in the city during times of emergencies. Other outages include electrical which would prevent residents from receiving emergency notifications from their home phones, radios, and televisions.
Members of the city council mentioned that each proposed method has its own pros and cons. Some of these systems would require members of the Malibu community to invest in new equipment. Weather radios can target specific neighborhoods in times of emergency but would also alert neighborhoods unaffected by an emergency which, according to reports, which ould cause unnecessary alarm.
Public Safety Manager Susan Dueñas told The Malibu Times that a decision to implement any of these new proposed systems is not going to be made any time soon. The city is still deciding how best to handle the issue which could lead to a decision in the next year or the following year, but it has not been confirmed.
