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Residents praise fast fire response but say mobile-home parks missed emergency alerts
Summary
Councilmembers praised a quick, multi-agency response to an Easter fire, noting multiple aerial drops; residents said many mobile-home park landlines did not receive alerts and urged the city to build evacuation plans and improve outreach.
Several councilmembers described a swift, coordinated response to a small Easter fire, crediting local departments, mutual-aid agencies and aerial resources. Deputy Mayor Sella recounted that “there were seven drops. Two of them were chemicals. The rest were all water helicopters,” and praised the interagency training and dispatch performance that limited damage and prevented injuries.
At the same meeting, resident Marlene Walder said many older or low-income residents in mobile-home parks did not receive emergency phone calls on landlines during the incident. “Our park doesn’t have a system uh to warn them. There’s no evacuation plan yet and so that’s a problem,” Walder told the council, and she urged staff to reach out to parks to ensure evacuation planning and registration for reverse-911 alerts.
The mayor and staff recommended signing up for alertsandiego.org for landline and cell alerts and committed to having neighborhood services and housing staff contact mobile-home parks to discuss evacuation plans and alert enrollment. No formal ordinance or funding action was taken at the April 14 meeting; councilmembers framed the response as an operational outreach priority.
Why it matters: Emergency-notification gaps can leave vulnerable residents without timely warnings; the council’s pledge to improve outreach could reduce future evacuation risk for mobile-home park residents.
What’s next: Staff follow-up to reach mobile-home park managers and to encourage or assist residents to register for reverse-911 alerts.
