2017年10月，美国加利福尼亚州北部地区发生毁灭性森林及灌木丛火灾，加州州长布朗（Jerry Brown）宣布该州８个地区进入紧急状态，并命令当地群众撤离。火灾导致4000多栋房屋被烧毁，1万多栋房屋受到不同程度的损坏，40多人遇难。在之后的2个月时间里，《圣罗莎民主党人报》用8篇特稿跟踪报道这一灾难，并分析灾难发生的原因。
普利策奖评委会评价，《圣罗莎民主党人报》的记者对火灾进行了“清晰和坚韧”的报道，他们“熟练使用一系列工具，包括摄影、视频和社交媒体平台，为读者带来清晰的报道——无论是火灾发生之际，还是之后的深度报道。
Fire survivors say Sonoma County’s alert system failed them
火灾幸存者对索诺玛的警报系统深感失望
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The day before a deadly firestorm raced from Calistoga to northern Santa Rosa, burning entire neighborhoods to the ground, Martin Whiteside’s cellphone emitted an obnoxious tone and displayed a message: Suspected child abduction in San Francisco. Be on the lookout for a silver Ford.
一场致命的火灾，从卡利斯托加蔓延至圣罗莎北部，烧毁了几乎所有的社区。在这场事故发生前一天，马丁·怀特塞德的手机发出一阵刺耳的声音，显示出一条消息:旧金山疑似有儿童被绑架，请注意一辆银色的福特汽车。
A longtime resident of Greenbriar Way in Rincon Valley, Whiteside considered himself prepared for an emergency. He had no landline telephone, but he had downloaded emergency notification applications on his cellphone and kept a public alert radio on hand. He’d stashed flashlights, extra food, toilet paper and water in case of an earthquake, and kept a list of things to grab during an evacuation. But none of those preparations helped early that Monday, Oct. 9, as Whiteside slept. A firestorm burned for more than three hours before it encroached into his neighborhood north of Montecito Boulevard. About 1 a.m., a neighbor pounded on his front door, Whiteside said, and when he stepped outside there were “flames all over the place.” His phone had remained silent.
林康山谷绿蔷薇路的久居居民怀特塞德，认为他对突发事件已做好了万全准备。虽然没有座机电话，但他在手机上下载了紧急通知应用程序，并准备了一个公共警告收音机。他把手电筒、应急的食物、卫生纸和水放在一起，以防发生地震。他还列好了在疏散过程中带走的物品。但是在10月9日，怀特塞德还在睡梦中，这些准备工作没有起到丝毫作用。大火燃烧了三个多小时后，入侵了他所在的蒙特西托大道以北社区。大约凌晨1点。怀特塞德回忆，有一名邻居敲他的前门，当他走到外面，才发现“到处都是火焰”。而此时，他的电话仍旧毫无反应。
“The one time I needed this — really needed this — the damn thing wasn’t used,” Whiteside said.
“一旦我需要它，真的非常需要的时候，这个该死的家伙就不管用了。”怀特塞德说道。
In those initial hours between 9:45 p.m. Oct. 8 and daybreak the next morning, thousands of people endured terrifying and death-defying escapes amid fires that eventually burned 142 square miles of Sonoma County, leveling neighborhoods between Calistoga and northern Santa Rosa, and in Kenwood, Glen Ellen and east Sonoma. At least 23 people in Sonoma County died in the fires, which destroyed more than 5,100 homes.
在10月8日9点45分至第二天天明最初这段时间内，成千上万的人在可怖的火灾中命悬一线，奔走逃离。这场火灾最终烧毁了索诺玛县142平方英里的土地，卡利斯托加到北圣罗莎的居民区，肯伍德，格伦艾伦以及东索诺玛被夷为平地。火灾烧毁了超过5100户人家，其中至少有23位索诺玛县居民丧生。
In the aftermath of the fires, with the destruction plain to see, many residents who escaped want to know why official evacuation alerts — in the form of phone calls, text messages or loudspeaker announcements — never came for them.
火灾之后，造成的破坏显而易见。许多出逃的居民都想知道，为什么官方的疏散警报，例如电话，短信或者喇叭通知，从来没有出现。
If the well-known Amber Alert messages for suspected child abduction cases can ping phones across a region — a technology used in adjacent Lake County that night to warn its residents about the fires — why didn’t Sonoma County officials use it to warn people about a growing firestorm mere caway?
既然出名的安博警戒信息在儿童诱拐案件中能够被跨地区使用，临近的莱克县的居民也通过它接收到了火灾警报，为什么索诺玛县官员没有使用这项技术来提醒人们仅数英里外的大火呢？
“AMBER”是“America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response”，直译为“美国失踪人口：广播紧急回应”。安珀警戒是使用美国紧急警报系统透过商业广播电台、卫星电台、电视台，以及有线电视向全国发布，并同时会利用电子邮件、电子交通状况号志，以及无线装置的短信发布。
“I’m emotional when it comes to this, and I’m a rational guy,” said Patrick McCallum, who fled the fires with his wife, Judy Sakaki, president of Sonoma State University.
帕特里克·麦卡勒姆和他的妻子——索诺玛州立大学的校长朱迪·萨基一起逃离了火灾。他说：“我素来是个理性的人，但是面对这样的情况，我变得非常情绪化。”
They burned their bare feet and ran for their lives as flames tore through their Fountaingrove neighborhood. By that point, about 4 a.m., the Tubbs fire, which started outside Calistoga 9 miles to the east, had been burning more than six hours. McCallum, however, was only awakened by a smoke alarm and the couple’s home already was on fire. The landline phone in the bedroom never rang.
火焰席卷了麦卡勒姆居住的“喷泉果园”社区，他们飞奔逃命，火焰舔舐着他们的赤足。那时大约凌晨4点，起源于卡利斯托加东部9英里的塔布斯大火已经燃烧了6个多小时。然而，麦卡勒姆却是被一个烟雾报警器惊醒的，尽管他们的住宅已经着火了，但卧室里的座机电话却从来没有响过。
“Someone has to do a deep dive of facts,” said McCallum, an education lobbyist. “There were mistakes made.”
“必须有人去深入调查，”教育界的游说人士麦卡勒姆说，“有地方出错了。”
Four alert systems 四个警报系统
Sonoma County officials did issue evacuation notifications throughout the night — initially with firefighters and deputies on the ground banging on doors, blaring sirens, urging people to evacuate over the loudspeakers in the rural communities along Petrified Forest Road where the Tubbs fire made its first advance from Calistoga toward Santa Rosa.
索诺玛县的官员们整晚都在发布疏散通知。刚开始他们和在场的消防员还有助理们狂敲门，后来拉响刺耳的警报，用高音喇叭敦促人们疏散。高音喇叭设在石化林路路边的农村社区里，也是在这条路上，图布斯（Tubbs）火灾首次从卡利斯托加（Calistoga）蔓延到圣罗莎（Santa Rosa）
Over the next seven hours, sheriff’s officials sent eight Nixle messages — each with increasing urgency — warning the public about fires advancing down Mark West Springs Road toward Santa Rosa, into Kenwood and Glen Ellen, and telling the public about evacuation centers. Santa Rosa police sent three messages through Nixle before 6 a.m., starting with a 1:41 a.m. mandatory evacuation notice for Skyfarm, Fountaingrove and Montecito Heights neighborhoods.
在后来的7个小时里，索诺玛县的官员们发了8条Nixle消息（Nixle为当地警察部门、县应急管理处、市政府及其在美国境内的机构提供免费和付费的通知服务），而且一条比一条紧急。这些消息警告大众，火灾从马克西泉路（Mark West Springs Road）蔓延到了圣罗莎（Santa Rosa）、肯伍德（Kenwood）和格伦艾伦（Glen Ellen），同时也说了疏散中心的情况。圣罗莎的警察在早上6点之前就用Nixle发了3条消息。从凌晨1：41开始，天空农场（Skyfarm），瀑布果园（Fountaingrove）和 蒙特塞托高地社区（Montecito Heights neighborhoods）都发布了强制疏散通知。
At 11:35 p.m., Sheriff Rob Giordano ordered evacuations from the Larkfield area to the Napa County border using a pre-recorded phone call sent to 2,096 phones. The CodeRED phone system, known locally as SoCo Alerts, is capable of sending automated calls to approximately 175,000 landlines in the county, and it can be geographically focused.
晚上11：35，从拉克菲徳地区到纳帕县边境，索诺玛县长官罗布·佐丹奴都发布了疏散通知。通知是用电话事先录好，再发送到2096部电话的。当地使用的被称为SoCo的红色警报电话系统，它能自动呼叫该县约175000个座机，还能集中处理某些区域的情况。
But programs like Nixle and SoCo Alert require people to enroll in advance to get a text, email or cellphone call. In a county with a half-million people, relatively few had signed up. Between the two systems, it amounted to less than 35,000 cellphone users, including some who had signed up for both systems.
但是像Nixle和SoCo这样的应急系统都需要人们提前注册，以便获取短信、电子邮件或电话通知。在这样一个拥有50万人口的县里，注册人数却相对较少。两个系统的注册用户总共不到3.5万，其中还包括了那些同时注册了两个系统的用户。
In the wake of the fires, however, Sonoma County emergency department officials have faced criticism for not using a fourth system that would have sent Amber Alert-style messages to any cellphone within a certain distance of a cell tower — reaching locals and tourists alike and overriding silent settings. Called a Wireless Emergency Alert, the system is managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and has certain limitations, such as a message limit of 90 characters.
然而，在火灾发生后，索诺玛县应急部门的官员因没有使用第四系统而遭到批评，该系统能在发射塔某一段距离内给任何手机发送安博警戒（Amber Alert-style）信息，以告知当地的居民和游客，并覆盖手机静音设置。该系统被称为无线紧急警报系统，由联邦紧急事务管理署（FEMA）管理，但有一定的局限性，比如90个字符的消息限制。
The program is available to the Sonoma County Emergency Services division, housed within the county fire department. Emergency officials have said publicly they opted against using the program because they didn’t want alerts to go out countywide and cause mass evacuations that could have prevented first responders from reaching affected areas.
该系统在索诺玛县消防部门内，可用于县应急服务部门。应急部门的官员们曾公开表示，他们选择不使用该系统，是因为他们不希望警报扩散到本县以外的范围而导致大规模人员疏散，而这很有可能阻碍首批救援人员抵达灾区。
“In this rushed environment to inform as many people as possible, we were worried that notification would go out too broadly, and potentially clog roads,” Sonoma County spokeswoman Hannah Euser said.
索诺玛县发言人汉娜·伊泽尔（Hannah Euser）说：“在这个慌乱的环境中如果要尽可能地告知更多的人，我们担心通知得太广，（过多的人疏散）可能会堵塞道路。”
But state emergency officials have said the system can send messages to smaller geographic areas. That was done in Lake County before dawn on Oct. 9. Lake County sheriff’s Lt. Corey Paulich said he drew a polygon on a map around the Lakeshore Drive area of Clearlake where he wanted to force notifications onto any cellphones so people would know a wildfire was coming their way. The message went out at 2:15 a.m.
但是州应急部门的官员表示，该系统可以向较小的地理区域发送信息。莱克县（Lake County）就是这样做的。10月9日拂晓之前莱克县长官陆军中尉科里·保利希（Corey Paulich）表示，他在地图上绕着清澈湖（Clearlake）湖岸地区画了一个多边形，他想在那块区域内的任一手机上强制发布通知，让人们知道大火正在迅速蔓延。这条消息在凌晨2：15发出。
“Our agency and our citizens in our county, we are very sensitive to dealing with wildfires,” said Paulich.
保利希表示：“我们县内的各个机构，各位公民，我们对处理火灾都十分谨慎。”
Authorities have said the fires that burned through communities in Sonoma, Lake, Mendocino and Napa counties knocked out power and disabled cellphone towers.
官方表示，在索诺玛、莱克、门多西诺和纳帕县社区燃起的大火已经摧毁了电力系统和手机信号塔。
Budge Currier, manager of 911 systems for the California Office of Emergency Services, said as many as 120 cell towers across Northern California were damaged or otherwise impacted by the fires that began Oct. 8, although he didn’t have a specific number for Sonoma County.
加州应急服务办公室911系统的负责人巴奇·柯里尔表示，从10月8日开始的火灾已经破坏或影响了加州北部120座手机信号塔，尽管他还没得到索诺玛县的具体数据。
It’s unclear when those cell tower disruptions began.
目前还不清楚这些信号发射塔的毁坏是从什么时候开始的。
But some cellphones were working even hours after the fires ignited. In the aftermath, people have shared stories of friends and family calling — providing essential warnings of the coming danger.
但是一些手机在火灾发生几个小时之后还能用。在回顾火灾事故时，有人说他们当时接到了亲朋好友的电话，警告他们火灾危险即将到来。
The friend that called Will Barnes’ cellphone at 1 a.m., awakening him, likely saved his family, he said, although they barely escaped as flames engulfed their wooded neighborhood on Michele Way off Mark West Springs Road
威尔·巴尔内斯说，他的朋友在凌晨1点打电话叫醒了他，这个举动很可能救了他们一家人。在马克西泉路（Mark West Springs Road）附近的米歇尔路（Michele Way）上，火焰吞噬了他们的植被茂密的社区，他们一家差点就没逃出来。
“It’s the only warning we got,” Barnes said.
巴尔内斯说：“那是我们得到的唯一的警告。”
Unanswered questions尚待解决的问题
Sonoma County’s emergency management division — charged with planning for disasters and coordinating response — would not provide a list of phone or email alerts sent by its department to residents. Officials with the department, including emergency coordinator Zach Hamill and emergency manager Chris Helgren, didn’t respond to repeated requests by phone, email and through a spokeswoman for information and interviews over the course of a week.
负责灾难预警与协调应对的索诺玛县应急管理部门，拒绝提供他们当初发送警报的居民电话和邮件列表。一周以来，新闻记者们反复试图通过电话、电子邮件，和新闻发言人等途径征询信息进行采访，但包括应急协调员扎克·哈米尔（Zach Hamill）和应急事务负责人克里斯·赫尔格伦（Chris Helgren）在内的该部门的官员都没有答复。
For an Oct. 13 Press Democrat report, Hamill defended the decision to not send information to cellphones using the Wireless Emergency Alert system, saying he didn’t want to clog the roads if too many people responded to the messages and evacuated.
在10月13日民主党的一份新闻报道中，哈米尔（Hamill）为自己的决定辩护，他说，不使用无线紧急警报系统是为了防止过多的人回复信息并疏散而造成道路拥堵。
Helgren said in an interview broadcast on a local NBC news station that Sonoma County has access to the Wireless Emergency Alert program but has never used it.
在接受美国全国广播公司（NBC）地方新闻电视台的采访时，赫尔格伦说，索诺玛县可以使用无线紧急警报程序，但该县从未使用过。
Public concerns about a lack of warnings have come up repeatedly at meetings with county officials, where residents are asking why they didn’t receive calls or other warnings about the fires.
在NBC地方新闻电视台与地方官员的会面中，公众对于警报系统缺陷的忧虑被多次提及，居民们总在问为什么他们没有收到关于火灾的警报。
Giordano, the sheriff, said he’s “had a lot of people ask about that” and urges people to plan ahead by signing up for the warning programs. In the aftermath of the firestorm, many have.
索诺玛县的司法长官佐丹奴说他 “被很多人询问过该问题”，他呼吁人们注册警报程序，提前做好准备。在火灾过后，很多人都注册了。
Nixle had an audience with 21,284 mobile phones and 16,330 emails at the time the fires started. By Oct. 25, more than two weeks after the fires erupted, its Sonoma County audience had grown to 221,637 cellphones and 37,551 emails. The program is also used to share mundane government information, like arrest reports and civic events.
Nixle应急系统在火灾发生时有21284位手机用户，16,330位电子邮件用户。截至10月25日，距火灾发生已超过两周，注册该系统的索诺玛县居民中手机用户增长到了221637，电子邮件用户达37551。该程序还用于共享每日政务，如逮捕报告和市民活动。
Giordano said his department will learn from the disaster — but residents also need to take charge of their safety and plan ahead by signing up with county alert programs.
佐丹奴说，他的部门会从这次灾难中吸取教训，但居民也需要为自身安全负责，注册警报通知程序，提前做好准备应对灾难。
This week, Sheriff’s Office personnel met with representatives from Everbridge, the Burlington, Massachusetts-based company that created the Nixle software, to learn about a new program the company is developing that could send notifications to all cellphones within a certain distance of a cell tower — much like the federal wireless alert system.
本周，警长办公室的人员会见了马萨诸塞州伯灵顿的埃弗布里奇公司的代表，即NIXLE应急系统的研发公司，试图了解该公司正在研发的一套新系统。新系统和联邦无线警报系统功能相似，可以在信号塔的一定距离内向所有手机发送通知。
“We literally called them and said, ‘How can we reach more people,’” Giordano said.
佐丹奴说：“我们确实给他们打了电话，并问‘我们怎样才能通知到更多的人，’”
State Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, said he’s aware Lake County employed the Amber Alert-style notification program during the first hours of last month’s firestorm whereas Sonoma County did not.
州参议员麦克·麦奎尔·德尔兹堡说，他得知莱克县在上个月的火灾中于第一个小时内就使用了安博警报通知程序，而索诺玛县却没有。
“There needs to be a top-to-bottom analysis here locally,” McGuire said. “We have already started the process at the statewide level to determine what technology currently exists and where the technology lacks, how we can improve the statewide protocols.”
“自上而下的分析迫需进行，”麦奎尔说， “我们已经在全州层面开展调查，确定目前使用哪种技术，还存在哪些缺陷，以及如何完善本州的应急规范操作。“
‘Hurricane of fire’
“火焰风暴”
Sonoma County residents have been listening closely to officials’ explanations of how they tried to warn people, and what they didn’t do. Many people interviewed have said even a few additional minutes could have spared them — and their children — harrowing experiences.
索诺玛县居民一直在密切关注官员们对于警报问题的解释。许多采访对象称，如果再多出几分钟，他们和孩子就能免受折磨。
“He didn’t want to cause havoc, he didn’t want to send out mass messages. So instead you ruined people’s lives?” said Pam Rumberg, 45, of Santa Rosa, responding to what she’s read about a Sonoma County emergency official’s decision to avoid using the alert program. “My 6-year-old, myself, my partner, we will never be the same.”
“他说不想引起骚动，不想发出大量信息，所以就可以毁掉别人的生命吗？”圣罗莎45岁的居民帕姆·伦贝格如此回复索诺马县紧急事务官员避用警报程序的决定，“我6岁的孩子，我，我的丈夫，再也不能和从前一样了。”
The night of Oct. 8, after Rumberg was asleep, her partner, Will Barnes, stayed up to watch the documentary on the Vietnam War and keep an eye on his phone because the air was smoky in their wooded Michele Way neighborhood. They have often experienced the smoky effects of fires in Lake County, and that’s what he assumed this was. He dozed off and was jolted awake about 1 a.m. when a friend repeatedly dialed his number after seeing on Facebook the fire was on their street.
10月8日夜晚，伦贝格入睡，丈夫威尔·巴恩斯熬夜看越战纪录片，一直留意着电话，因为住宅附近的米歇尔路地区树木茂密，却弥漫着烟雾。在莱克县，他们常经历火灾附近的烟雾缭绕,他以为这次也是这样。他打起了瞌睡，又在凌晨1点被惊醒。他的朋友在Facebook上看到巴恩斯居住的街道发生了火灾，不停地拨打了他的电话。
“I put my head out the back door and I could see it up on the corner,” Barnes said. “By then everything was on fire — the neighbor’s house, trees, the wind was blowing sideways across the road.”
“我把头伸出后门，我可以看到拐角处的火焰，”巴恩斯说。“那时，所有的东西都着火了——邻居的房子，树，马路对面大风呼啸。”
Barnes gathered up his sleeping 6-year-old son, and the family ran outside into “a hurricane of fire,” Rumberg said. She and Coda got into one car, and Barnes got into his pickup. But they barely got down their driveway before realizing neighbors were in bumper-to-bumper traffic trying to get onto Mark West Springs Road and out of the inferno. Rumberg got out into a storm of embers, grabbed their son and got into Barnes’ pickup. She was surprised her hair didn’t catch fire.
巴恩斯叫起他6岁的儿子寇达，全家跑入室外的“火风暴”中。伦贝格和儿子上了一辆汽车，巴恩斯登上卡车。但当他们勉强下了车道时，才意识到邻居都在拥堵的车流中，试图进入马克西泉路，逃出人间炼狱。伦贝格冲出大火，抓紧儿子，进入巴恩斯的卡车。她很惊讶她的头发没有着火
Driving through thick smoke and alongside walls of flame, they made it down Mark West Springs Road to a Larkfield shopping center. With them they had little else but phones and a baby book. In the panic of switching vehicles, Coda had dropped the stuffed monkey he’d had since birth.
穿过浓烟和火焰墙，他们沿着马克斯西泉路开到拉克菲尔德购物中心。除了手机和一本婴儿书之外，他们几乎没有别的东西了。在换交通工具的匆忙恐慌中，寇达丢失了自出生就一直陪伴他的毛绒猴玩具。
“He said to me the next day, ‘How am I going to be able to sleep? My monkey always made me feel safe,’” Rumberg said.
“第二天他对我说：‘我怎么才能入睡呢？我的毛绒玩具猴一直给我安全感，’“伦贝格说。
翻译：刘曼芳 安然然 糜琪琦
编辑：曹羽晗
推荐阅读：http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/local/7585485-181/fire-survivors-say-sonoma-countys
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