As Southern Oregon moves deeper into fire season, emergency preparedness becomes increasingly important for households across Josephine County.
Josephine County Commissioner Gary Richardson recently launched a simple but important preparedness effort called the Know Your Zone Challenge — encouraging community members to learn two key pieces of information before an emergency happens:
- What is your evacuation zone?
- Are you signed up for Citizen Alerts?
The goal is straightforward: help more people become familiar with the tools and systems that may be used during wildfire emergencies.
Why Knowing Your Zone Matters
During wildfire events and other emergencies, evacuation notices are often issued by geographic zones. Understanding your zone ahead of time can help reduce confusion and improve response times during rapidly changing situations.
Josephine County uses the Genasys Protect interactive map system, which allows residents to search by address and identify their evacuation zone.
Check your zone here:
https://protect.genasys.com/search
Sign Up for Citizen Alerts
Citizen Alerts are one of the first emergency notification tools used to communicate urgent evacuation information and other critical public safety updates.
Residents are encouraged to:
- Sign up if they haven’t already
- Review their contact information to ensure it is current
- Make sure alerts can reach them quickly during emergencies
Sign up for Citizen Alerts here:
https://member.everbridge.net/1332612387832182/login
A Community Effort
Preparedness works best when communities work together. By taking a few minutes now to learn your evacuation zone and verify emergency alerts, households can take an important step toward being better prepared this fire season.
At IVCanDO, we encourage residents to stay informed, stay connected, and help share preparedness resources throughout the Illinois Valley community
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