Oakland Fire Station No. 1, 1605 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland, CA

Alan Thompson, Public Information Officer for El Dorado County's Neighborhood Radio Watch will be delivering an in-person presentation to the Oakland Radio Communication Association (ORCA) at their monthly club meeting to discuss the unreliability and failure of cell phones during emergencies like wildfires.

This presentation will focus on the 2018 Camp Fire, with an emphasis on the colossal communications service failures and the over reliance on cell phones and the internet that put people’s lives at risk and why these same failures will likely happen again. Alan will discuss how we must find more resilient solutions to help ensure our communities get timely, life-saving information about fast-moving disasters like the Camp Fire.