Situation
In the City of Mill Valley, located north of San Francisco on the southeastern slopes of Mount Tamalpais, many residents live in narrow, heavily wooded canyons. After the deadly 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California.
Mill Valley community leaders decided that the city’s outdated mechanical air raid sirens needed to be replaced with modern emergency warning system installations that continue to operate when existing power and communication infrastructure goes down.
Problem
Most emergency warning installations sound sirens, but are incapable of broadcasting intelligible voice notifications containing critical information about the nature of the emergency and potentially life-saving instructions.
Mobile phone alerts are dependent on cell towers that are prone to fail during power outages and wildfires.
Solution
After evaluating and testing several systems, city officials selected the industry-leading area coverage, vocal clarity, and connectivity options of industry-leading Genasys ACOUSTICS. 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.
The Genasys Protect platform also includes custom communication zones that provides emergency responders with a powerful evacuation tool that supports zone-based evacuations, multi-jurisdictional collaboration, and direct public communications through the Genasys Protect app.
“The City of Mill Valley is excited to announce the installation of new and more powerful emergency sirens to replace our aging system. These sirens project both siren and voice recordings to alert and inform the community.” – James Wickham, Mayor of Mill Valley
