| In 1999 when KWMR flipped the switch 25 years ago and went live on the FM airwaves, emergency information was on everyone’s mind. This was not that long after the Mt. Vision Fire that ravaged the Inverness Ridge, burning homes and many acres of forest. Today emergency information is still on everyone’s mind, even with some distinct changes in the landscape.And by landscape, I don’t just mean the dense forest growth on our ridges, with lots of fuel for wildland fires, but also the media landscape.When KWMR went on the air, there was Horizon Cable TV, folks mostly had dial up internet, and we used email, but many still faxed things, and more transactions were done with paper checks. Facebook wasn’t even created until 2004 and Twitter (now X) came online in 2006. The National Emergency Alert System went into effect in 1994, many of us don’t really remember a time before the duck fart sounds.In 2013 Marin County upgraded Alert Marin, which was previously the Telephone Emergency Notification System. Last year the Office of Emergency Services moved over from the Sheriff’s Office to Marin County Fire and is now called the Office of Emergency Management. They manage a relatively new mapping system to track incident in their Emergency Portal.Social media was in its infancy when I started as a programmer in 2007, so I personally have seen a lot of changes in the media landscape, and now AI is ramping up. In fact, AI is used in the translation software developed for KWMR’s bilingual emergency notification application that was developed by KWMR programmer Will Bartlett. During hurricane Helene this fall, much of the southeast was without power, cell phone service, and therefore any online access for days, and in some areas weeks. My dear friend in Asheville is still drinking bottled water since that infrastructure in Buncombe County was damaged so badly by flooding that they are still working to repair it months later. Local FM radio stations were the only means of getting any information at all, and they did a good job, even with many of their staff dealing with the effects of the storm on their own homes.So while you can get a lot of information via the interwebs and social media, local FM radio is still valuable. You can sort of think about KWMR as a local insurance policy that also brings you the voices of the community, reading a good book, playing tunes that “take you back” or introduce you to some new music, and I’m not sure you can hear someone playing the keytar and singing along with popular produced music on any other station.KWMR does practice when we are experiencing very welcome lulls in emergency situations. The generator is serviced annually, and we are always looking at ways, as the media landscape, as well as the weather and climate landscape shifts, to ensure that we can be there for the community during times when the “chips are down.”The team here also works closely with first responders, the Public Information professionals at the County and at the Office of Emergency Management and with our local disaster groups in West Marin.Are you ready for an earthquake, flood, or other emergency? There is a lot of great information at Ready Marin to get you started.As KWMR wraps up 2024, I hope that you will make a contribution to our End of Year Appeal, via the button below, and share with us what you value about your local radio station. We very much value you. |
