Santa Barbara County is no stranger to the kinds of natural disasters — mainly wildfires and floods — that prompt evacuation orders for residents.
When they occur, the task of notifying residents to flee to safety typically falls to law enforcement.
Sheriff’s deputies, police officers and Search & Rescue team members go door to door, alerting people of the impending danger and urging them to leave.
As part of that process, law enforcement will sometimes cruise the streets in their patrol vehicles, making evacuation announcements over their public-address systems.
In the future, those efforts will be aided by a new kind of siren that has been added to the vehicles — a high-low alert similar to what is used by emergency vehicles in Europe.
“People kind of ignore the regular sirens,” Santa Barbara County sheriff’s Cmdr. Rob Plastino told Noozhawk. “People don’t really pay much attention to them.
“If you’re in your house and you hear a siren, you usually don’t think anything of it.”
Public safety officials hope the new sirens, which only will be used for evacuations, will catch people’s attention at a critical time.
The new sirens were authorized by state legislation approved in 2020, Plastino said. They are not required, but are encouraged, and are being implemented throughout California.
The Sheriff’s Department has added the sirens to most of its patrol vehicles, as well as its unmarked vehicles, Plastino said, and will continue the process as they are cycled into the maintenance shop.
The Santa Barbara Police Department also has been implementing the new sirens, which generally just require a software upgrade to the existing siren hardware.
“It is highly recommended if you hear this new siren tone, tune into a trusted media source to obtain information to confirm if you and/or your family need to evacuate or are affected by an emergency,” police Sgt. Ethan Ragsdale said.
The Lompoc and Santa Maria police departments thus far have not added the new sirens to their fleets.
(City of Santa Barbara – City TV video)
— Noozhawk executive editor Tom Bolton can be reached at tbolton@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.