Boulder County has seen three significant fires so far this year, killing one person, destroying six homes and putting the county’s systems for resident updates to the test. In response to reader questions following our wildfire communications guide, we spoke with Kim Scott and Monika Weber from the Boulder Office of Disaster Management to clarify how the key alert systems fared during these recent fires. The systems are:
- BOCO Alert: Sends mandatory evacuation orders via Everbridge, using SMS, email, voice calls and TTY/TDD. These location-specific alerts are issued by first responders and routed through a 911 dispatcher.
- BOCOInfo: A new text messaging system that relays BOCO Alert updates along with additional information like firefighting status, road closures and evacuation centers. It’s not location-specific and sends more frequent updates. This same information is also published on boulderodm.gov.
- ReachWell App: Provides BOCO Alert and BOCOInfo notifications in languages other than English.
- Wireless Emergency Alerts: Automatic alerts, similar to Amber Alerts, used sparingly for immediate threats to life. The county advises against relying solely on these.
Read: A guide to Boulder County wildfire evacuation alerts
Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity.
How did residents respond to the emergency communication systems during the recent fires, and what lessons did you learn from their feedback?
Scott: We received a lot of feedback post-Stone Canyon Fire [near Lyons] and then the Lake Shore Fire [near Nederland]. We’re now up to 24,000 folks that have signed up for BOCOinfo, which is huge. We’ve got a lot of feedback that the communication was great. We had one or two folks that said it was too much communication. That’s okay with me. I’ll take that complaint any day. But I feel like people have more awareness of those different means that they can engage in to access information that they need.
Weber: People [in Lyons] that were in the impacted community had a lot of very positive feedback to share about just liking that information, being able to have access to it and not have to go to a website.
I will say, on the flip side, for the folks that do feel like it’s too much, they can still go to our website and get all that information. So it is a matter of a person’s personal preference: Do they want to have it sent to their phone directly and then they can click the link and see the website and that information, or do they want to seek it out themselves?
When residents signed up for BOCOInfo, they received alerts for both fires, resulting in dozens of texts over a couple of days. In the future, is there a plan to offer text messaging specific to individual fires?
Scott: When the Lake Shore Fire started while Stone Canyon Fire was happening, we talked about if that fire did progress further, creating another keyword, just specifically for that fire. If we had two big incidents, like we’ve had in the past with some of our previous wildfires, we could set up a separate keyword. But BOCOinfo for now is the generic text message that we can further improve upon if we needed to separate them out.
How can someone unsubscribe from BOCOInfo texts and other emergency notifications if they no longer want to receive them?
Scott: You type in “STOP” to BOCOinfo. That’s a common action to take when you want to stop receiving text alerts.
Weber: For BOCO Alert, they would need to go in and adjust their account. So if they want to cancel their account out altogether, they can log in and delete their addresses or just delete the account in general. If folks are struggling with any of those adjustments they’re trying to make, there is an AlertHelp@BoulderCounty.org email that goes to the communication centers that then can help folks with that kind of backend stuff.
For ReachWell, slide [a channel] and delete it.
Boulder has several opt-in options for emergency alerts. Why isn’t relying on automatic Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) enough?
Weber: In a Wireless Emergency Alert, you’re not going to typically get an advisory or a warning. It’s just going to be straight to that action to save your life. That’s something where I, for myself and my own risk assessment, don’t want to wait until it’s that significant.
But then there’s also the fact that wireless emergency alerts are used more sparingly, just because of the way the technology works. They can go to larger areas than they’re meant to, because it all is dependent on the cell carriers and how they choose to allow that messaging to go through their systems. BOCO Alert [the system through Everbridge where you input addresses] is going to be much more specific, so that you’re getting information that definitely pertains to you. Because I know I’ve gotten wireless emergency alerts from Colorado Springs before.
I’ll say for BOCO Alert, for folks that need any extra time to mobilize for whatever reason, it becomes really critical to make sure that they are getting those advisories and warnings, that they can start to take those preparedness actions before it’s time to go, and that they give themselves the best opportunity to leave with what fits their comfort level and their needs.
What are some changes or improvements coming to emergency alerts?
Scott: One change we are making, and that will help with a lot of our users that use cellphones instead of being at a computer, is just moving our public information map on our webpage up to the top right hand part of the page. Just because it doesn’t open up on that first screen on your phone. So I think that was just a learning process to better serve folks that are using mobile devices.
We want to clarify that BOCO Alert is how you’re going to receive emergency alerts. BOCOinfo is just that support information. Sometimes we do provide [emergency alerts on BOCOinfo] but it could be 10 or 15 minutes delayed compared to the original information going out through BOCO Alert.
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