Officials Host Community Preparedness Event
Residents need to join local officials in being prepared for the next major emergency, said District 3 Alameda County Supervisor Lena Tam and San Leandro Mayor Juan González to the 60 or so people who attended a preparedness meeting in San Leandro last Wednesday, February 5.
The meeting was held, perhaps coincidentally, at the same Marina Community Center where residents of nearby San Leandro neighborhoods, and some from San Lorenzo, had gone for shelter on December 29 of last year when a gas line under San Lorenzo Creek ruptured.
Thousands of people were evacuated, but there were no injuries, and the gas line was repaired.
The meeting brought together most of the companies and government agencies that would have to work together in the case of another emergency, whether it was an earthquake, wildfire, another gas leak, or even a tsunami alert like the one on December 5, 2024, which caused evacuations in several bayside cities.
Those companies and agencies all pledged their cooperation in the event of an emergency, but residents were also urged to sign up for emergency notifications via ACAlert and Nixle, two free smartphone apps for Apple and Android phones.
The officials took turns describing what had gone well in the two evacuations and what had gone poorly.
While the San Leandro Police Department sent out a Nixle notification and even cars with loudspeakers to urge people to evacuate, not everyone got the message. San Lorenzo residents, near enough to the ruptured line to be in danger, didn’t get the alert, according to several residents.
A potentially more dangerous situation arose when Chinese-speaking residents heard the loudspeakers saying something in English. Some thought it was to shelter in place when they were actually being told to leave. Officials admitted notifications were needed in languages other than English.
In some cases, people living by 880 spoke English but were so used to hearing drivers pulled over on the freeway by the Highway Patrol that they thought that was what was being said.
“We hear those all the time,” said one freeway neighbor.
Residents also told officials that a plan for evacuating the disabled, including transportation to a safe place, needed to be developed.
Washington Manor resident Melissa Wong suggested dusting off emergency sirens from past decades, as older people may not use smartphones or maybe listen to a TV turned up loud. She said codes could be used on the siren to identify what kind of emergency it is.
Anna Quan, a San Lorenzo resident, said potentially conflicting sources of information in an emergency were a problem.
“What we need, once we know something is going on, is one official place to go to get information,” she said.
You can get early information about an emergency by signing up for AC Alert at ACAlert.org, which also links to several other county agency websites. Residents of San Leandro can sign up for Nixle alerts by texting their ZIP code to 888777.