Mountain Disaster Warning System Set

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to spend up to $170,000 on an early-warning system that will telephone residents when wildfires, mudslides or other disasters threaten the region.

Worried that storms could bring more flash floods in the next month, the supervisors voted to negotiate a contract with Dialogic Communications Corp. of Nashville to install the Web-based system. The board decided not to seek competitive bids in hopes of activating the system in the next two weeks.

The warning system would be programmed to telephone thousands of residents at a time, alerting them to evacuate or be prepared to do so. Emergency officials can limit the calls to a designated area selected from a computerized map. The residents would hear a message recorded by local officials and tailored to the emergency.

Supervisor Dennis Hansberger praised the system but warned that residents, particularly those in heavily wooded or slide-prone areas, must stay vigilant and take steps to keep their homes safe.

“I believe it’s a useful tool, but it is not a panacea,” he said.

Dialogic Communications said similar systems are now used by public safety agencies in San Diego and Los Angeles counties and in the cities of Redlands, Temecula and La Quinta, among others.

Some customers have reported problems with the system. Dialogic recently was forced to reimburse $118,000 to three Arkansas counties where the automated phone system failed to work as promised. In October, the company refunded the money to Ashley, Columbia and Union counties after the Arkansas attorney general’s office investigated.

Ashley County officials said the system didn’t work nearly as well as Dialogic said it would.

Lorin Bristow, a vice president for Dialogic, said the system did not work properly in the three counties because local officials did not have enough mapping data for some areas.

“We are not in the mapping business,” Bristow said.