What Are Emergency Alerts?
Emergency alerts are important messages you receive to help keep you safe during a disaster.
In an emergency, you need to know what is going on. You need to know what to do and when to do it.
You should sign up for emergency alerts in the places where you live, work, or regularly spend time. Sign up to get free emergency alerts and other important information.
Learn what different alert messages mean and how to sign up to get them.
Emergency alerts from county or local officials can quickly give you important life-saving information. These free alerts will tell you when there is possible danger, a natural disaster, or an emergency and what you should do to stay safe.
Emergencies or disasters you might get alerts about include, but are not limited to:
Fires
Floods
Evacuations
Public safety
When you sign up, you can choose how to get alerts sent to you, including cell phone, home phone, email, text messages, and in some cases, TTY devices.
Emergency alerts tell you that you may be or are in danger. Alerts are sent when there is a threat to everyone’s health and safety. Officials will use the same words and phrases in alerts to explain what is happening. Learn the meaning of these common alerts. Knowing what these words mean can help you act more quickly.
Evacuation Order: Immediate threat to life. This is a lawful order to leave now. The area is lawfully closed to public access.
Evacuation Warning: Potential threat to life and or property. Those who require additional time to evacuate, and those with pets and livestock, should leave now.
Shelter in Place: Go indoors. Shut and lock doors and windows. Prepare to stay inside until further notice and or contacted by emergency personnel for additional direction.
Evacuation Order(s) Lifted: The formal announcement of that it is safe to return to the area.
Hard Closure: Closed to all traffic except fire and law enforcement.
Soft Closure: Closed to all traffic except fire, law enforcement and critical resources.
Resident Only Closure: Soft closure while allowing residents and local government agencies assisting with response and recovery to enter.
Some alert systems may not always be able to send alerts in the language you speak. So that you can understand what each alert means, read over all the English words used in alerts. You can always come back to this page when you get an alert for help understanding what it is telling you.
Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) are no-cost text messages for emergency situations sent through a nationwide system providing lifesaving information for families in the state of California. They are sent out for three reasons:
- Presidential Alerts are sent during a national emergency
- Imminent Threat Alerts are sent for dangerous weather and other dangerous threats to life
- AMBER Alerts are sent when a child goes missing in your area
Please make sure your device can get them and that your phone settings allow alerts. Spanish-language versions of alerts will be displayed if your device settings are set to Spanish as the preferred language.
Earthquake Warning alerts are sent out to give you warning of an earthquake before you feel shaking. To receive earthquake warnings, there are three ways for individuals and families to get alerts through the California Earthquake Early Warning System.
- MyShake App: Free smartphone app that provides iPhone and Android users with audio and visual warnings, available in both English and Spanish.
- Android Earthquake Alerts: Android phones with updated operating systems are automatically subscribed to Android Earthquake Alerts, which uses the same technology as the MyShake App.
- WEAs: No-cost text messages for emergency situations sent automatically.
