Sonoma County, which lost 25 lives in last October’s wildfires, has changed the ways in which it alerts residents after scathing criticism for not using cellphone alerts during the devasting fires last fall.

The then emergency manager and others decided against sending out mass alerts because they believed they could not adequately target who received the messages and didn’t want to “over-alert.” They felt that doing so could lead people who were safe to evacuate into a more dangerous area or cause severe traffic.

The new policy will be to send out alerts, even if they risk alerting more people than is necessary, according to Jim Colangelo, interim director of the Department of Fire and Emergency Services. He said the county has gained a “better understanding that we can do a better job of geo-targeting than what was believed back at the time of the fires.”

The county looked at the response from the Thomas fire in Southern California and asked the California Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) to review its response and come to some conclusions that formed its new policy on response.

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