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b'Redwood Valley residents gathered in the firehouse on Saturday morning for a demonstration of a warning siren and updates on plans to increase the number of sirens to notify people in remote areas of a pending emergency. One siren, installed at the station in August 2021, has a range of about one square mile.\\n\\nKerry Robinson is the chief of the Redwood Valley Calpella Fire District, which has 23 volunteers and four paid staff. He reflected on Saturday morning\\u2019s test and how expanding the notification system has been a long-standing desire of the community.\\n\\n\\u201cMy impression was, it was very, very loud,\\u201d he reported. \\u201cI walked outside and just went, oh, my. And then they stopped the siren, and you could just hear it echoing through the valley\\u2026This is one of the things I\\u2019m very very concerned about, being the fire chief here in Redwood Valley. The community is my number one priority, so I want to make sure the community is well taken care of. The community has spoken and spoken several times, asking when the project would be completed. And then the county stepped up and said, hey, we can help out with a grant. So I\\u2019m really looking forward to getting this project going. I was there in the 2017 fires. It was horrible.\\u201d\\n\\nThe 2017 firestorm was on Supervisor Glenn McGourty\\u2019s mind, too. \\u201cI\\u2019m really excited about this, because after the 2017 disaster here in Redwood Valley, one of the things everyone noted was, it would have been really great to have had some kind of warning,\\u201d he recalled. \\u201cAnd then we had failures of our cell system and everything else, so it really was tragic, the way that we couldn\\u2019t get the word out. So this is part of a long term investment process that the county has gone through, first with PG&E funds, and then we supported Measure P, which passed.\\u201d Measure P was a ten-year quarter-cent general sales tax measure that voters approved in November. The Board of Supervisors referred it to the ballot. It\\u2019s estimated to raise $4 million a year for essential services like ambulances and firefighters. Because it is a general tax, it is not a binding measure.\\n\\nChief Robinson said there are several different ways to activate the sirens, either with cell phones or a landline or even manually, in the event of another collapse of key infrastructure. He said plans for exactly what it will cost to expand the system, precisely how many more sirens will be added, and where they will go, are still in the early phase. The current estimate for how many more sirens will be needed is four. So far, the project has cost $60,000, mainly from the PG&E disaster settlement.\\n\\nCharles Clugston is the president of CTC Mass Notification Systems, the distributor of the siren system. He shared some technical details. \\u201cWe have four batteries in there, and it\\u2019s solar powered,\\u201d he explained. \\u201cWe\\u2019re at 560 megahertz. So it\\u2019s like a foghorn, so it travels really far. Like when someone drives up behind you, like a young kid, and they have a lot of bass in the car, you feel it. It\\u2019s like that.\\u201d He added that even if the telephone pole holding up the siren were to snap, the siren would continue to sound. The system also includes a number of tests for deficits of its various components. The weekend\\u2019s test relied largely on citizen feedback from residents who called in to report how well they heard it, from which parts of the valley.\\nClugston said there will be more testing of the siren\\u2019s sound quality, combining the data from previous years and this weekend, to determine where the next sirens will be positioned. \\n\\nBrad Cox represents Whelan Engineering, which designs and implements the systems. He spoke about the local challenges of finding the right location for more sirens. In Northern California, with its ridges and valleys, \\u201cit is a task to get covered at times,\\u201d he noted. His company\\u2019s units have a range of 5,800-6,100 feet, but the size of the unit is not always as much of a concern as the terrain, which dictates how far the sound can travel. For that reason, the system is designed around the targeted area. If there are ridges all the way around a site, he said, \\u201cThere\\u2019s no sense in putting the large one in, because (the sound) is not going over the ridge. It\\u2019s going to go up and that\\u2019s where it will stop. So some of the areas may have the smaller one, because it doesn\\u2019t need the large one. It doesn\\u2019t benefit them anymore. So that\\u2019s part of our planning, is to find out where we need them, what size we need, and then develop a plan and deliver it back to the county.\\u201d There will be further analysis and public hearings before the project proceeds. The units will be \\u201con the ground\\u201d within about three and a half months of placing an order, and then the installation and bureaucratic hurdles will begin.\\n\\nClugston hopes to start installation within a year. Chief Robinson took an opportunity to talk up his department. \\u201cWe\\u2019ll get through this project here,\\u201d he predicted; \\u201cand we\\u2019ve got some additional fire engines that are showing up. We have a lot of new volunteers here at the fire station, so we\\u2019re constantly working to make this fire department the best it can be for our community,\\u201d he declared.'