The California Emergency Services Act authorizes the Governor to declare a state of emergency, and local officials and local governments to declare a local emergency, when specified conditions of disaster or extreme peril to the safety of persons and property exist. Existing law establishes the Office of Emergency Services within the office of the Governor and charges it with responsibility for the state’s emergency and disaster response services for natural, technological, or manmade disasters and emergencies, including responsibility for activities necessary to prevent, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the effects of emergencies and disasters upon people and property. Existing law requires the Office of Emergency Services, in consultation with, at minimum, telecommunications carriers, the California cable and broadband industry, radio and television broadcasters, the California State Association of Counties, the League of California Cities, the disability community, appropriate federal agencies, and the Standardized Emergency Management System Alert and Warning Specialist Committee, to develop guidelines for alerting and warning the public of an emergency.

This bill would require the office to establish a statewide emergency alert system called California Alert. The bill would require California Alert to utilize Wireless Emergency Alerts authorized by the Integrated Public Alert Warning System, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s national system for local alerting that provides authenticated emergency information to the public through mobile phones within a designate cell tower’s coverage area. The bill would require the office to contract with a private vendor that provides alerting systems to send California Alerts to registered phone numbers that are not location based. The bill would require the office to establish standards for issuing emergency alerts to California residents across local jurisdictional boundaries.