Situation
The City of Berkeley’s Disaster and Fire Safety Commission requested that the Mayor and City Council install an outdoor warning system that could be integrated within the city’s existing emergency response plan. With multiple emergencies affecting wide swaths of California, numerous cities and counties (including Alameda County, where Berkeley is located) were upgrading their emergency notifications systems to meet the needs of their constituents during wildfires, flood events, and more.
Problem
Situated next to multiple green spaces, regional parks, and preserves, the City of Berkeley abuts the Wildland Urban Interface that includes fire hazard severity zones rated as ‘very high’ and ‘extremely high’.
The Commission cited multiple failures due to limitations of their current siren-based emergency alerting system that left residents without proper notification during the 2017 North Bay Fires and the 2018 Camp Fire.
Solution
The City of Berkeley contracted with Genasys, Inc., to provide Genasys Protect software that works in conjunction with Genasys’ industry-leading acoustic devices. This state-of-the-art solution provides voice-based mass notification that works with standard electricity, satellite connectivity, and solar-powered backup batteries, so information gets out even when the power goes down.
Genasys Protect provides emergency responders with a powerful evacuation tool that supports zone-based evacuations, multi-jurisdictional collaboration, and direct public communications through the Genasys mobile app.
In conjunction with Alameda County and surrounding communities that are also using Genasys Protect, the City of Berkeley has a modern outdoor alerting system that blankets the entire community. In addition, they are an active part of a growing collaborative defense with multiple participating jurisdictions using a cohesive platform.
Speaking to the needs of the community, the Commission has vastly improved their wildfire prevention and preparedness program through the vertical solutions afforded by Genasys Protect. This has allowed the City of Berkeley to strengthen their emergency communications process to include important redundancy in alerting methods not possible with previous systems.
