King County Inclusive Emergency Communications Plan

Implementation and Operations

King County reports annually on the number of alerts issued and the reach of multilingual alerts based on the number of people signed up to receive alerts in languages other than English. KCEM also reports annually on translation and technology challenges and recommendations for improvement to jurisdictional stakeholders, with a copy sent to the Washington Emergency Management Division LEP Coordinator. The plan is formally reviewed and updated with partners every five years and may also be updated after exercises or real-world events through after-action and lessons-learned processes. Plan elements are incorporated into annual training and exercises, including JIC/JIS exercises and bimonthly PIO webinar trainings.

The plan uses training, exercises, and partner engagement as part of its maintenance and evaluation approach. Elements of the plan are incorporated into annual exercises, such as Joint Information Center/Joint Information System exercises, and into bimonthly Public Information Officer webinar trainings. KCEM Duty Officers are trained to use ALERT King County to issue voice, email, and text alerts to mobile devices and landlines in geo-targeted areas. The plan also emphasizes regular engagement and inclusion of trusted partners in planning, training, and exercise activities so community networks are prepared to help disseminate time-sensitive emergency information.

Not applicable

The plan describes a regional emergency communications model for delivering timely, accessible, and multilingual life-safety information before, during, and after emergencies. Key features include ALERT King County multilingual alerts, Wireless Emergency Alerts, pre-scripted and pre-translated hazard messages, plain-language source messaging, coordinated public information through the JIS/JIC structure, use of interpreters and translators, ethnic and culturally relevant media outreach, trusted partner networks, and community-based channels to help distribute and reinforce emergency information.

King County serves a population of about 2.27 million people speaking more than 170 languages and dialects, and the plan recognizes additional communication needs among people who are deaf or hard of hearing, blind, or have cognitive disabilities. The plan identifies 32 LEP language groups as significant population segments under Washington’s emergency management standard, with Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Somali, Dari, Russian, Ukrainian, Hindi, Arabic, Cantonese, Telugu, Punjabi, Korean, Amharic, Pashto, Tamil, Japanese, Marshallese, Portuguese, Tagalog, Tigrinya, Urdu, French, Cambodian, Oromo, Farsi, Turkish, Swahili, Modern Hebrew, Marathi, Samoan, and Malayalam listed above the threshold. King County also uses a tiered translation system, and pre-scripted key life-safety messages have been translated into English, Spanish, Chinese/Cantonese, Chinese/Mandarin, Vietnamese, Korean, Somali, Russian, Ukrainian, and Punjabi