A.M. Radio stations have the Santa Ynez Valley covered for Disaster Preparedness

BUELLTON, Calif. - Santa Barbara county is announcing a new communication network for emergencies and disasters, using A.M. radio.

A.M. radio as a general concept is over a hundred years old. 

After five years of development, Santa Barbara county is pleased to announce this service to the community.

After the Thomas fire and the damage caused by resulting debris flows, Santa Barbara county began an initiative to bolster a.m. radio infrastructure for the Santa Ynez valley.

“You go back to the bunny ears or the, you know, the antenna on your radio and how you moved it around to get a better sound. It is still part of that very old technology, but it gives us that just another way to communicate with our community,” says Kelly Hubbard, director of SBC Office of Emergency Management.

Now, after the devastation of the recent Los Angeles wildfires, and amid a push on social media to be prepared if the power grid fails, many locals are either beginning or reviving their investments in disaster preparedness. 

“We keep ten gallons of clean water, you know, and certainly have a bunch of grains and that kind of thing that would keep us going for a little bit,” says John Lawrence, who lives in Santa Ynez.

Santa Barbara county’s Office of Emergency Management has unveiled the strategic placement of several a.m. radio stations.

“What we had to do to get coverage in the county. AM radio is what's considered a lower band radio. So sometimes in Santa Barbara you can hear radio stations from San Diego. That's not the case with a.m. radio. So we had to actually put five separate stations or repeaters in North County to keep that and get as much coverage as we could,” says Hubbard. 

Should a disaster of any magnitude occur such as a fire, earthquake, flood, or any other loss of power, these remote stations will continue broadcasting alerts and recommendations.

“Right now, it has a prerecorded message that's about how to prepare strategies when an incident happens. Our office, office of Emergency Management and the sheriff's office can update those messages to include information about what you might need to do to stay safe,” says Hubbard. 

Coverage extends as far north as Santa Maria and Guadalupe, and efforts are underway to establish another location in Cuyama.

“We actually experienced an outage of the Internet here in the Valley. That was about three months ago. And it was it was palpable how cut off we are from the world when you don't have the phones and you don't have the Internet,” says Lawrence. 

You can tune your radio to A.M. 530 to hear the county’s latest preparedness messages.

County officials recommend programming handheld and car radio stations to A.M. 530 so you're ready before disaster strikes.