Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-06-25_THURSDAY_7AM

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Conspiracy THeory Thursday calls and info, Delaney Richmond is the Jackson County Emergency Manager and we dig into changes going on to get you informed of emergency situations and alerts.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. More on these stories at townhall.com. This is News Talk 1063 KMED and you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. It's Conspiracy Theory Thursday 7705633. We're talking tariffs, we're talking all sorts of things this morning. Happy to be on your mind. And Luc talking tariffs, we're talking all sorts of things this morning. Happy to be on your mind. And Lucretia, we have to have your theme there because you're going to channel something else. I started the show off with this ridiculous guest pitch about a guy who claims to talk with John McCain and Dick Nixon and Teddy Roosevelt from beyond

the grave, and he would help us avoid climate change by getting on the right side of it. But anyway, what are you thinking? It's on your mind. Oh, I was just going to do some time travel and maybe we can figure things out from there. Here you go. Here's some time travel. All right.

This layer is the product of the foundation for the development of a weather satellite. All right. Yeah, who is that, Lucretia? That's LBJ, yeah. That is LBJ. I thought it was LBJ. It was a little bit scratchy coming through the phone like that. So, he who controls the weather controls the world. Is that where you're going, Ben? Yeah, they control the clouds. I mean, they can do it. It's just a matter of frequency to... If the heart heats up the sky and creates the heat dome or literally just bringing in the graphene oxide and it could just dramatically cool it. They can put a straight line across this country between high and cold.

Okay, well are you then implying then that when we have weather that we don't like that is too hot, that it's by design? By design. Okay. Just like the floods. So then let me ask then, what is the purpose of our own people then toasting us to a delicate crunch in the summer? Yeah, you know, I've been watching some of these videos of all the incredible stone buildings and cities that burnt down in the past. And everybody knew you have way more fires if you use wood. And yet even in the past, some of these pictures, you see the trees are still standing, but the buildings are strangely torn down.

And it's like that car that Kelly was going to produce back in 19... I think it was 13, it ran on air. Or the other guy on water, 22 gallons get all the way across the country of water. You know, Stanley Myers. You know, the thing is, it violates the laws of physics, though. You do understand this. Running it on water. That's what Tom Bearden said, it violates, but it doesn't because it's not perpetual motion. I mean, atoms have been spinning for 15 billion years. I don't know how long they're going to spin. But we do know there's over 600 experiments Tom Bearden talked about that totally worked and he tried to get patents, but they won't patent it it's like that guy down in in well, I'll tell you what now now if you have come up with a a

perpetual motion machine you're able to and by the way I know that even physicists have talked about that zero point energy is Theoretically possible in which you were just tapping into the energy of the universe and it's just a matter of doing it properly. Now, rather than getting patents for it, put it out there and let people try it. Let us try it and if it works, hey, wouldn't that be great? And on that note, I'm going to put an order in. We're going to have very nice weather this weekend because it's going to be like in the mid-60s because the weather computer gods are going to let their boot off of us for a little bit. Okay, Lucretia? All right. Thank you. Enjoy it. Yes. Open phones continue on Conspiracy Theory Thursday. This is the Bill Meyer Show.

Do you take safe drinking water for granted? If you have a well for your water. Into Friday warming to 59, we got mid 60s this weekend. 18 after 7, we'll continue the conversation with Ron from Grants Pass. Hello Ron, you wanted to talk about, I guess it's the tariff issues here. I was bringing up an example of how even in my industry costs were going to be raised on replacement antennas Most of them come from Mexico at this point, but 35 33 percent or so

Instant increase in price. So, you know, it's real. It's what happens to to real businesses doing real things. What do you think? Well, I think you have certainly hit a point One thing I want to bring up is Trump is matching what other countries are tariffing us for the most part. It's an equal for equal kind of a leveling the playing field. It's not like he's taking advantage of us by increasing our price. It's the companies that are using that as a cudgel to make up a difference which isn't really there because Trump is just trying to level the playing field. Well I know that if the president you know because of his

trade policy ends up forcing my let's say my company's cost to replace an antenna. I'm just using this as an example and there are a million companies like me out there in different industries, that sort of thing. The challenge is that you don't have more revenue to be able to say, hey, well, we're just leveling the playing field. That's what I'm getting at. One other thing I called originally for, as we discussed earlier, was I think the unions are kind of like a surcharge that is a cudgel that forces everybody to either

pay the higher union demand or lose the services or the products that the unions try to do. So there's another issue. Third issue is the raising and controlling of interest rates for purposes of buying something. The Fed and the banks are in another conspiracy. So if you add all this up, it's really a giant conspiracy to prevent the people from living normally where you just have a one-person workforce in the home. Yeah. Well, and I was even kind of mentioning that earlier, is that ultimately what we're doing

is discussing all these changes that have been forced upon us because of the inflation which has been going on for decades. It's like it's all coming home to roost right now. Is that kind of where you're going? Going out here? That's true and guess who goes to the retirement heaven is the people that are unions, the people who are making money off of you and me who are working two or three jobs just to keep above the water level. Well, do keep in mind though, that the most highly unionized section of this country is public employees.

That tends to be the bulk of it. That's why they've gone to it because private sector unions have not been particularly growing for a while. They're still there, but it's not nearly as powerful as the public sector. All right. But other than that, I'll concede your point. Appreciate the call there, Ron.

722-770-5633. We have open phones this morning talking about everything from tariffs to channeling Richard Nixon on climate change. I don't know. Whatever. Lithium, Audi and Paint presents the Travel Report on KMED.com. Check it for changing road conditions, road cams and gas prices throughout our region. The Travel Report is on KMED.com. Check it for changing road conditions, road cams, and gas prices throughout our region. The travel report is on KMED.com, brought to you by Lithia Body

and Paint on Bullock Road in Medford. Turn up your radio. Here's the shot. HanityGold.com or call 855-815-GOLD. That's HanityGold.com. You're hearing the Bill Meyers Show on Southern Oregon's Home for Conservative Talk. Mornings on KMED at 99.3 KBXG. Call Bill at 770-5633. That's 770-KMED. Here's Bill Meyers. I'll bet you're as astounded as I am when you heard about that story about a federal judge

telling President Trump, no, you have to send that USAID money. I bet you're as astounded as I am when you heard about that story about a federal judge telling President Trump, no, you have to send that USAID money. It's like, yes, you must spend the money. We must. You must. You must. You must increase or go bust. I don't know.

It's wild times these days, huh? 7705633. We do have some mobile phone times. You know, I have a couple of stories here that are wildly different or widely different, but yet at the same time, kind of getting to the same point in which people who are beggars, whether they're electronic beggars or they're homeless beggars here in southern Oregon, are wanting to be able to determine everything about their life and yet have somebody else pay for it. Now what stories am I talking

about? Okay, well this is one which is in the Wall Street Journal this morning. RFK Jr. and his allies target Trump's beloved soda. Within the Trump administration, the push to strip soda from the food stamps, you know, SNAP benefits like we have here, Oregon Trail Card, it's getting personal. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls it poison. President Trump has multiple cans of it every day. Welcome to the 2025 soda wars. At both state and federal levels, the Kennedy-led Make America Healthy Again movement is backing efforts to stop people from spending food aid benefits on sugary carbonated beverages. And now they're gaining momentum, with an administration led by a man who likes soda

so much that he had a red button installed on his desk for a valet to bring him a Diet Coke. Now I think it's perfectly reasonable what RFK Jr. is trying to do with SNAP benefits because I've already told you that SNAP benefits have been the biggest corporate welfare plan ever come up for big corn, big food, and big soda. and big soda. Sorry to say that. But what they have found out here is that the number one... currently SNAP recipients... let me share just a little bit about this man... currently SNAP recipients can purchase most food with the benefits but not things like pet food or alcohol. And Sanders said the state is still fine tuning the language of the waiver request etc etc. Needless to say, Pepsi and Coca-Cola and all of their

other sugary drink manufacturers are not liking this at all. But soft drinks, sugary soft drinks, are the number one purchased commodity with SNAP benefits in SNAP households, in Oregon Trail Card households. That's what we'll say, right? Now, in non-SNAP households, people who actually pay for all their food themselves, it's the number two commodity. But it's the number one, in other words, the number one food bought with food stamps or the Oregon Trail card

are sugary drinks. And people are saying, well, we should be able to buy what we want. Yeah, you can buy what you want with your money, but you're not doing it with your money, so I'm actually okay with this. And what's the other story that kind of reminds me of the Bakers Can't Be Choosers here? Because remember, Snap Benefits essentially is an electronic begging card. We don't have you on the street with a bowl out there. Would you give me some coins so I can go get some food?

We have electronic benefits now. It's the electronic beggars. And I'm not insulting people who have to do it, but that's essentially what we have done. You can call it benefits, but it's still an electronic beggars. And I'm not insulting people who have to do it, but that's essentially what we have done. You can call it benefits, but it's still an electronic beggar. I don't think that you have a right to be able to complain about this. Which then brings me to my second story here, and this is from KOBI5.com. Police Using Camera and Loudspeaker at Homeless Site. Grants Pass Police have deployed a new tool at one of the three designated

camping sites for the unhoused, though it's making some residents of the location uneasy. A large mobile surveillance trailer equipped with loudspeakers and multiple cameras was installed at the corner of Northwest 6th and A Street just across from City Hall. Multiple residents at the city's approved camping site tell NBC5 News the cameras are invasive and dehumanizing. Chris Taylor, who has spent the last year living in a tent at various locations in the city, said he feels like an animal in a zoo.

Another former resident told us how she feels. Kim, a former resident told us on the phone, it almost feels like they don't trust us. They're treating us almost like we're kids. Okay um, correct me if I'm wrong. Hasn't Grants Pass had problems with people, oh I don't know, shooting and knifing each other to death in their homeless encampments? Didn't they have a shooting one at the home a few months ago? Maybe it was a year ago, a little over a year ago.

And what do we know? If you see a homeless person on a bicycle, generally speaking, a lot of times you can guarantee that that bicycle was stolen from someone's front yard. I see it all the time on Jackson County Scanner. You see it all the time. Someone stole my bike, someone stole my bike, and then you see it in the bomb bicycle lane in the downtown Medford in the road diet. You know, that sort of thing. And they're treating us almost like we're kids and it feels like they don't trust us. Because yeah, you can't trust you.

It's like, ah, you're a beggar. You're a beggar. You want the homeless, you want the free needles, you want the free food delivered there, and then you're upset that there's cameras and speakers around you to tell you to move along and that they're observing to make sure that maybe you're not shooting and knifing one another, the worst ones, okay? Or being drunk disorderly, raving lunatics, fighting over the box of needles. I know everyone's not that way, but it's like, all right, and they have a story in there. This guy's been living in a tent for like a year. What have you done to try to get to the point where you're not in a tent for a year?

This is like a lifestyle choice you've made at this point. And you want the city of Grants Pass to provide it. Oh well. I know it's not Pebble in your Shoe Tuesday, but there's my irritation. Let me go back to the phones here. 7705633. Yep. Bakers want you to pay for it and then ask no questions and have no requirements and no rules. I just love it. I'm kind of like this. If you ever remember this ancient Pink Panther movie that had the Inspector Clouseau, Inspector Clouseau, answer the phone, you know, that sort of thing.

And how is you minky? And the chief, he would always start getting a tick and like, you know, every time I see the electronic beg-a-thon and how no questions can be asked or rules made, it just gets to me. But anyway, let me go to line three. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Welcome. Good morning. It's Bob Hart. Hello, Bob. How are you this morning? I'm doing reasonably well. How about yourself?

I'm fine. Just suffering a little bit of a tick this morning. But anyway. Anyway, the reason I called this morning is to remind everybody this is our last town hall coming up Saturday in White City on the wildfire mapping. Yeah, what's that two to four when that's going on? That's room two to four at The White Mountain School. Yeah, I have this out there. Yeah, Saturday two to four White Mountain Middle School, White City. You're going to be there cheerleading it. Senator Noah Robinson, State Representative McIntyre, Jackson County Commissioner Colleen Roberts, among many others that are going to be attending, right? Right. And this will be the last one before the cutoff on the appeals, which is this coming

Monday. So everybody needs to get their appeals in. How do you get that in? Is it one of those things that it has to be postmarked a certain time or you're sending it by registered mail so you have a determined time that you sent it? How would you suggest that? At this point, try and send it registered. You can get it stamped locally You can get it stamped locally when you take it in. If you just drop it in the mail and it goes to Portland first, they may not post-market until later. All right, good point. Well, I know you're going to have some great information there, Bob. Really.

And you can submit it online. And on mine, I did it both, mailed in and online. And online you can check the box in your email to get a return receipt when they open it up so you have a confirmation that they do have it. How do you submit it online? You can go to the ODF website or right on the bottom of the Wildfire Hazard Appeal form you can use the submit button at hazardmap at odf.oregon.gov. All right very good. Bob thank you for the reminder. I had the story out. I was going to remind people but I'm glad you did it better. Okay. All right. I appreciate all your help. All right thank you very much Bob. Let me go to the next line.

Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hello? Hello? Hi. Hi, Bill. This is Francine's recall. You gave us permission. Yeah, I gave him permission for a recall because like I said, we were doing stupid calls the first half hour with the Dick Nixon channeling, okay?

God, the last thing in the world I want to hear, if you want to see here, John McCain again. Oh my God. Oh, the last thing in the world I want to hear is I want to see your John McCain again. Oh my God. Oh, I know. It's just like, you know, you people, you wouldn't be, you know, I was right. You people wouldn't do it. You could pay $50 to pick a lettuce. You wouldn't do it, my friends.

Oh man. God help us. Okay. Well, here's what I want to say. You know, no matter, I don't want to debate the points of whether we should tell people what they can buy with their food cards or all that. That's not my point. The real issue here that we should be paying attention to is the entire intentional manipulation

and just skewing of society and societal values and putting us in positions that make us more vulnerable to government oversight and the eventual, was it going to be Big Brother or whatever? I don't know, the technocracy, we are just going to be completely controlled and that's what they're working toward and that's what all this is about It's just the step baby steps that they're putting us through and my Concern though is that you know everybody that's involved with the Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and all the rest of them They are technocracy boys. They are yeah and make no doubt about it And I'm just hoping that President Trump is is wise enough not to bring us into the scientific and the experts running our lives kind of

dictatorship okay I don't think he is I think he's sucking it up big time and he's he thinks he's doing the right thing probably all right well could be let's pray not pray for guidance go to the next line thank you for Francine let me go to the next line hi good morning this is bill was this hello hello hi who's this polymorphine josephine county by holly good morning bill your your are here all we love you

all thank you you're great anyway i wanted to tell people we've really got to keep an eye on what's going on in Salem and i want to tell people the easy way to do it is to Google OLIS, which stands for Oregon Legislative Information Systems, OLIS. It'll take you to a link where you can look at all the bills and what's going on every single day or periodically

and respond to the bills that you're concerned about, put testimonials in. It's a very easy way of keeping track because if we don't, we are not gonna recognize this date in a year and we are not going to have personal rights, property rights, they're all being stripped away at warp speed. So again, that's O-L-I-S. It's very easy to do but very important.

Would you suggest some to track because remember, five, last time I saw, five thousand bills were submitted, Holly. How do you even begin to keep track of five thousand bills? Well, the one thing you can do is as information comes through from your legislators, Dwayne Younger, Alex Garlatos, Noah Robinson, look in those newsletters and generally they'll tell you what to look at. So right now we're looking at SB 77, SB78, and SB-48. Those are all huge violations of property rights.

What you can do on your own property, whether you can do business, how many people you can have, what buildings you can have, these are all things that you need to take a look at. They have little synopsis, so you don't have to read a whole bill. You can get a general sense of it. Of course, if you read the newsletters from your legislators, they will tell you the salient points about those bills. But generally speaking, if they bring it to your attention,

take action immediately. Don't wait. Because what happened on 7-62, the Firemap business, we started hearing about this a while back and many of us, and I have to include myself in this, we didn't take enough action. And didn't, yeah, we didn't take it seriously at that point. I would agree. I would agree with you.

And so we need to do that. So it's, you know, just like we're keeping an eye on the encampments and so forth to make sure nobody gets murdered, we need to keep an eye on the legislature to make sure that they don't overstep their authority over us because we just can't have that. Point well taken. Good call, Holly. Thanks for making it. 739 at KMED.

Short and chilly days are an opportune time to work on the interior of your home. Drake's Paint and Supply, your locally owned Benjamin Moore dealer, invites you in for advice on interior painting to transform your rooms that need new paint. News Talk 1063 KMED, you're waking up with the Bill Meyers show. In studio this morning here on Conspiracy Theory Thursday, no conspiracy theory, but we're going to be talking about some changes over at Jackson County. And Jackson County's emergency manager Delaney Richmond is in studio. Hello Delaney, a pleasure. Good morning. I mean, we can talk about conspiracy theories if you'd like.

Okay. Well, any good conspiracies bubbling around at the county? No, not currently. No. Nothing happened currently. All right. Well, that's good. Now, there was a release the other day and I was reading, and it had to do with some changes in emergency management. And not your job, per se, but that Jackson County is going its own way and coming up with its own emergency notification system called Jackson Alerts. Now, I know that up to this time, there had been this partnership. Josephine County and Jackson County

shared the same Everbridge account. Is that true? The way we were working it. And then what has happened to change this and what's it going to be looking like moving forward here? Because after Almeida, anytime we're talking emergency management, I'm sure you're kind of sensitive to this kind of stuff too. People are going, okay, what, something else I have to sign up for? What, what? Right, and a lot of questions over the last week have been like, hey, I was signed up for Citizen Alert and I'm a Jackson County resident.

How do I make sure that my information got moved over? And I think I want to start off with, if you had a Jackson County address in the Citizen Alert system, we have your information. Okay. Beaver Bridge is the mass alert notification program that we have, and underneath of that is Jackson Alerts and Citizen Alert, which is what you can opt in for, which you basically sign up for a profile. You put on a geographic address, like a home, school, you can put up to five addresses that

you wish to receive alerts for. And if you don't, you have a landline. We could probably contact you from a landline, but if you don't sign up, then there are a couple other alert types that we could send to contact you. But this one's very much targeted towards where your house is, what's impacting you in your immediate area. All right, now so when we get the the telephone call like that on Jackson Alerts, that's not Everbridge? That is Everbridge. So Everbridge is like the umbrella program that we utilize to send multiple types of alerts and Jackson Alerts is you can consider it like one type of contact method. Okay, alright, because the moment that there

was talk about Everbridge, then the conspiracy emails started coming in. I had some guy was saying, well look who's running Everbridge, then the conspiracy emails started coming in. I had some guy who was like, look who's running Everbridge. Some hedge fund guy. And I said, no, the way I understand it, Everbridge is almost like the, I guess for lack of a better term, the Microsoft word of emergency alerting systems. Is that kind of like almost like an industry standard now? Yeah. So the state of Oregon actually picked up a contract a few years back under the OAR alert program to basically pay for Everbridge to be provided to counties who wish to use it. So most counties do use it, I think all but two.

Okay, and what is this about Josephine County and Jackson County parting ways when it comes to their Everbridge account? What happened? So I think for background it was an interesting relationship between Josephine County and Jackson County emergency management based upon probably two or three emergency managers back from me. She did a lot of rotation between Jackson County and Josephine County and it made sense at the time to have a combined account but since Almeida specifically in the lessons learned and our constant strive to improve how we notify people,

our alerting strategy, we were looking at growing and we've been building more robust templates. And the specific thing that kind of caused the shift was back in 2023, Josephine County Board of Commissioners decided to merge their IT director and emergency manager position. And that kind of caused a little bit of a bulk on our side because we've been trying to grow and expand emergency management over here on Jackson County and that kind of flagged

it and our, you know, Board of Commissioners decided that we would split ways. Yeah, well, Jackson County, Josephine County though, of course, is under a pretty serious funding crunch. And, you know, like I said, they've already had several employees who accepted buyouts so they're looking at it. And so it's, I think it's just the reality. So it doesn't mean that Oregon or that Josephine County, Oregon doesn't have Everbridge. They just have their own account now.

It's separate from Jackson County. Yep. So a lot of the reason why we also decided to move forward with our own Everbridge system was that it allows us to, like I said, have more robust templates. So after- What do you mean by robust template, okay? Good question.

I can start getting really technical with this. You're geeking me out, okay? It's all right, I love it. No, so when we, so every type of alert that we can send, for example, like a level three wildfire evacuation, there is a template that the alert sender fills out. And as an admin, I can build that template and ask for very specific fields like, hey,

we're going to put zone numbers in this year, which is going to be good. And then also like an area of description, who's requesting the alert, because emergency management isn't authorized to send alerts, except for very rare cases's always the first response agencies contacting us. Oh so you can't send the alert? No so I'm the one that types up the alert on their behalf. So but it comes from the Jackson County Fire or Phoenix this and Talent that or Medford whatever right? And I would love to come back on and actually talk about

the process later but for for, for Jackson alerts, um, like I said, Jackson County residents, all of your information has been migrated over into our system. So when I signed up and signed up our, my home and my mother's home and all this sort of stuff, that's still in there. Yup. And an email went out to people who registered online and had an email address in the system saying, Hey, we've migrated over your data.

Please sign up with a new username and a new password because your username and password from Citizen Alert can't be used. And I tried really hard with Everbridge to negotiate that, but we couldn't figure out a technical way to do that. But for the folks that did log on online, you will be asked to set up basically a new login info, but you'll be able to verify all of your information below.

So that's really the call to action is, hey, even if people don't log in to verify their information or do a sign in account, I still have your information. I'll still blow up your phone. But if you sign up, it's still in his fault. Okay. Yeah. But for the folks that did login information, it's really imperative going into this fire season with, you know, the Palisades fire, North Carolina hurricane. Like it's been insane to watch

the amount of natural disasters and how other counties and you know states use the alert warning system and we're always trying to gather lessons learned from that. You know something that was kind of a concern to me Delaney, and by the way if you're wondering who I'm speaking with, it's Delaney Richmond. She's the Jackson County Emergency Manager. And how long have you been doing this, by the way? I started as Emergency Manager back in October. Okay, October. So brand new. So you found the keys and everything like that. Everything's working okay. They gave you all the passwords. Good. What I was kind

of wondering about is, and I was kind of criticizing a number of months ago when we were having a lot of fire alerts coming out on the various alerting systems. And the challenge that I've had and other people have had is that, you know, we'll talk zone OR950 or something like that. And it just, nothing about the notices ends up matching references or anything, it's like, I have to know a zone number in order to know whether or not I'm having a problem or not, or somewhat I know or love that I'm taking care of.

Is there any way to have not only the zone numbers be used on an alert, but also perhaps the basic geography, like a zone, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, north of Table Rock Road in my by violence or something yeah, I'm just I'm just talking about the the Human relatability of it and I even on the news media when they would say, you know We have evacuations in for zone blah blah blah blah blah But you know, it's it's like asking people to memorize a lot of numbers about their people

It doesn't make sense to the real world. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I would actually reposition it as an alert center. We are trying to quickly and expediently and efficiently convey, hey, you are in an area where there's an incident occurring. It's really important that you take action. The way you're, if you're talking about

the level three evacuation alerts, there is a specific field that says, hey, this is the agency requesting the alert telling you to go. This is the level, level three, go now with the zone number. And then there's usually a general description of the area. But here's the catch with alerts is that usually the general description of the areas from first responders boots on the grounds that are doing the evacuations. And when I'm trying to triangulate and look at a map, the reason why zones are great and yes, it is something to memorize. Yeah.

But it is very good at outlining like here's a very specific geographic area that if you see your zone number on a text message, like you should memorize that because Hey, that's the quickest way to identify something's wrong with me. There's no interpretation based upon the actual general description. I will take the feedback though back to the news and be like, hey, like can you also provide the general description areas that are in alerts? Yeah, that would be good. Yeah. And maybe that's the way. Yeah, I know that I could understand that while you're sitting there at the at the alert computer trying to get it in there. My laptop.

Yeah, you're a little stressed out and just trying to get that out there quickly and and make it all happen. All right, so Delaney, another thing I was going to ask here and and this is going back to Almeda Fire. Of course, you were here at that point. There was a different emergency manager. It was a rough situation, as we all know know and a lot of stuff happened afterwards to try to make things happen. Are the guys really ever going to use the broadcast emergency alerts ever again for actual real broad based evacuations? Are you talking about TV and radio?

Yeah, TV and radio because we're sitting around here maintaining systems that at least in Jackson County I don't really see ever used much everything's always in Everbridge and it's like is this just kind of the direction it's going because you know I get to the point where I almost want to just ask the FCC do we have to keep sending this stuff up and doing the yeah stuff if it's not going to get used in an emergency if this is just the reality of where we're we're going moving forward? I don't think that at this point it's being pulled off the table.

And the way that we position it is that, you know, as emergency managers and first responders, we have a toolkit that we can use to alert from. In Jackson County, we have one of the like the top notch sheriff's office in the state. And I'll argue that with anybody any day. So they are very good at evacuations and what their priority is is to do door to door. When they come into a situation where the incident is growing outside of their capacity to do door knocks

and I think this also stands for law enforcement across the valley in Josephine County too. That's when they decide to do an alert. Now, when we decide what type of alert to choose from, we can do the opt-in data, we can do the EAS, the radio and the TV, we can do a WIA, which is a wireless emergency alert that hits cell phones all within a geographic area, and we can also now do weather alerts through the National Weather Service, no weather radio, which is pretty cool. I will say though that with each alert

there are very specific constraints and restrictions with them. And when we choose which type of alert to send, we have to keep that in mind, right? Like if we're targeting a very like high tourist area, it might be hoover us to use a we have because these people are not registered. They don't have a house in Jackson County. For E. A. S. It's tricky because it hits multiple counties and it is a rather it's an older system. Yeah, it's an older city. It is broad. It is broad. I'll give you that. I just remember with Allmita, people were yelling at me the day after because there were no alerts sent and there were other alerts sent in up in the Eugene area and people and I was going out trying to keep stuff on the air as things were burning down around us and then to not have that.

They said, well, we didn't get any information from the county. I said, well, I know, I can't send it out. You know, it was up to Jackson County. Now that was a different emergency manager. But even since then, I don't really see it used other than testing from the counties. And is that just kind of the reality of what we're looking at moving forward? No, I wouldn't necessarily that's the reality. But we just haven't come across an instance

where a multi-county alert being sent out would be appropriate for, you know, a general neighborhood evacuation, if that makes sense. So you have to look at the size and complexity of incidents when we decide what type of alerts are sent out. See, I looked at it as emergency information getting out to the greater people, even though it's only affecting one small section, but it's kind of like letting everybody know that, hey, you know, there's something going on.

You know, we got a, you know, a big wildfire has broken out in Northeast Medford. And if you're not plugged into it, you don't know. You don't hear about it. I think there are more appropriate methods to receive that sort of information. So we do have Jackson EVACS, which is a keyword that you can text to 888-777 and you'll receive

all evacuations for Jackson County, not just those within your specific geographic area. Oh, that's interesting. That's great. Yeah. The intent of an EAS isn't necessarily to notify everyone that there's an emergency. Like we are trying to get people who are in harm's way into a safe zone as quickly as possible. All right. So an EAS, I still think is applicable for several situations. If you remember, I think it was the summer or two ago, Klamath County requested the state to send an EAS and they accidentally used the wrong shape file

and it hit the entire state. Yeah, I remember that. Uh-huh. And so it's very much like when we look at these tools, like I said, they can be used for different scales of incidents and also we need to keep in mind the audience that we're using as well. So time of day also plays into account. Day of the week,

like how many people are at home watching TV or listening to radio. Is it like high traffic time? You know, all these things where it's like, okay, we keep those considerations into account. Delaney Richman once again, Jackson County's emergency manager. How can people then, we wrap up since Jackson County has transitioned to its own emergency notification system, Jackson Alerts there, how do you, if you could just wrap it up again on what people need to do to make sure that the latest information that they have and their accounts are all set and everything else. A lot of this information has migrated over, but where do you go?

What do you do? JacksonAlerts.org is where you sign up and then you can also go to JacksonCountyOR.gov slash alerts to sign up and learn more about the program on the county site. The call to action here is like if you signed up for Citizen Alert Online, you should have gotten an email from Jackson Alerts. It's not spam, I promise. If you have any questions, please feel free to call us. We've received a lot of questions from some of our elderly residents about,

hey, like I was, I called and I registered over the phone. Do I have to do anything with this email? And it's like, well, if you'd like to log in and update your information, yes. But if not, we can always update your information if you give us a call or email us as well. For those who are not signed up, please sign up. It's the best way to figure out how,

what's going on in your area, like your home, your kid's school, your work. And then the other question that I've gotten a lot this week though that I really want to address is that Jackson County does not sell or share your information, period. Oh, okay. So I've gotten that question a lot. So you're not going to get spammed because Jackson County has your info. No, and we don't share that with other agencies either. So we don't share it period. All right glad to hear it. Good information. I appreciate you coming in and we'll have you back. Yeah and we'll talk about it because I love you gaking us all out here on how this actually works but it is a big deal. It is a big deal and I know that most people are not thinking about the emergency alerts until things go to hell you know.

Yeah and everyone's like oh wildfire season, just like, la la la la. But yeah, no, it's really important to get signed up. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our office. We're more than happy to answer. Thank you, Delaney. Thank you. This is the Bill Maier Show, eight o'clock at KMED and KMED HD1. Hi, I'm Michael Gage of Construction and I'm on KMED.

Couple minutes after eight, Kevin Starr is going to join back into the show in about 10-12 minutes or so. We're going to be talking about the Measure 114 replacement bill in which the legislature is wanting to implement 114 even though it's been declared unconstitutional and is grinding through the courts. Pretty big deal, we'll kick that around. Tim is over in, gosh Tim, what town are you in? Or near again? Merlin.

Merlin, okay good. Glad to hear it. What's on your mind here? I think it had to do with emergency alerting and disaster, right? Yeah, I was in Selma helping some people out during that fire and I realized the ridiculousness of the notice, you know, 30-minute notice because if they were going to have to send a sheriff out there, it was pretty dire, because if the wind shifted, it would have burned down Cave Junction, Selma and O'Brien really easily. And the fire was let go for about a week

before they even did anything, unfortunately. So it got out of hand. And what happened was they were giving people emergency notice to get ready and then to leave. If you were going to leave, you would have a sheriff's deputy show up at your house until you have to remind you to get out. But you can't notify, I don't know how many people living in those hills and that area. You can't physically notify people within 30 minutes or an hour. It's just ridiculous. It's physically impossible to get these people out.

Now, by the way, I wanted to ask you here in those neighborhoods, what is cell reception like because so much of the alerting seems to be wanting to move to cellular networks. There's nothing wrong with that. I understand it works fine when everything's working great. But I know that a lot of times I'm out in some of the hills around there and it gets a little spotty. Am I right about that? Yeah, it can.

Even back then, this was about 20 years ago we were talking about. Oh. So yeah, it was. And people had landlines, they had radios and TV. And I called up Lily Morgan. By the way, 199 was blocked to California so they only had really one realistic way out of that town.

And so I talked to Lily Morgan about a former commissioner and I said, you know what, I think it's good to have everything out there because a lot of seniors are out in the yards, they may listen to the radio or the TV and they should be notified because most seniors are not a lot of them up in the hills and you know they just kind of live independently they're not really paying attention to that. Yeah they're not sitting around there plugged in and hanging out on X or TikTok and things like that and I think that and that was the reason I was asking Delaney about the EAS. I understand that it's not as granular as they would like it to be where they can target people who are right there and so they know and not telling everybody else.

But in some of these situations that are truly dangerous, I think we sell ourselves short by not having a broader alert on some of these things. And maybe there needs to be a protocol. I agree. And I talked to Lily about that. She said, well, we don't want to panic anybody. And I said, no, we need to, we don't want any person left behind, not knowing what's going on. And I think zones are crazy. You have to put streets or, you know, roads in areas like this, long Lake Selma, et cetera, you know, example, because all this stuff with the Everbridge and that physically notifying people in that broad area would have been physically impossible. People would have died that otherwise could have been saved if they got the notification

through the landline, the radio, the TV or the neighbor. But it was, you know, all the roads going into, you know, long roads up to these hills, people, you know, deputies could not do that. It's physically impossible, like a half hour notice, even an hour notice, if the fire jumped the highway, that would have been all bets were off. Good call, Tim. Thanks for sharing your experience from having been on the ground at that time, all right? You'll be well. It's six minutes after eight.

We'll catch up on town hall news here in just a moment. And then into the push from the state legislature to give you measure 114 good and hard, even though it's still in the courts. Kevin Steyer will be on next.