Butte County Sheriff Adds Evacuation Sirens To Patrol Cars

The Butte County Sheriff’s Office has added another way to alert residents in the event of an evacuation. 

Every marked patrol vehicle has been equipped with sirens, like those used in European countries. Called "high-low" sirens, they give deputies the ability to drive through neighborhoods to alert residents if there isn't time to go door-to-door. 

Butte County is following the lead of Napa, Solano, Lake and Sonoma Counties, which equipped their vehicles with the sirens last October, before the Camp Fire that devastated Paradise last year.

Butte County is also asking all of its residents to sign up for alerts through its “code red” notification system.  

“One of the things we’ve learned through the Oroville Dam spillway incident and the Camp Fire is we need to message across multiple platforms,” said Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea. “No one system of notifying people is going to be effective for everybody. We’ve been working to try and increase our ability to notify as many people as possible.”

An investigation by CapRadio found that during the first three hours of the Camp Fire, fewer than two-thirds of the phone calls made by the emergency alert  system went through to a person or voicemail. Only one third of the calls were actually answered by a person.