Marin County to test AlertMarin emergency alerts at 10 a.m. Sept. 26; fewer than half of Tiburon, Belvedere households signed up

Marin County will test AlertMarin, its emergency notification system, at 10 a.m. Sept. 26, sending a test alert to everyone registered for the service.

The test checks that AlertMarin can get critical information out in an emergency, according to the county Office of Emergency Management, part of the Marin County Fire Department. Belvedere, in a notice urging residents to sign up, also cited the approach of peak wildfire season and the El Niño forecast.

Subscribers will get the test by whatever contact methods they chose — text message, phone call or email — in English or Spanish, depending on their account settings. Anyone who doesn’t receive it should log in at alertmarin.org and check that their contact information and addresses are current, the county said.

Fewer than half of Tiburon and Belvedere households will get it. In Tiburon, 1,782 households, or 48%, have a subscription, and in Belvedere 456, or 45.5%, according to the office’s AlertMarin subscriber dashboard.

The rate falls by more than half in multiunit properties, where just 110 of Tiburon’s 588 housing units, or 18.7%, and 29 of Belvedere’s 136, or 21.3%, have at least one household subscriber. Tiburon has 2,716 individual subscribers in all and Belvedere 675.

AlertMarin sends real-time instructions during wildfires, floods, evacuations and other emergencies that call for immediate action. Anyone who lives or works in Marin can register at alertmarin.org, which the county says takes less than five minutes, and list up to five addresses — the county suggests home, work, a child’s school and a family member’s or friend’s house.

Subscribers can also opt into Notification Groups for information that falls short of an emergency alert: significant weather, coastal flooding and king tides, creek and river flooding, prescribed burns and significant traffic disruptions. The groups are not location-based, so a subscriber gets every notice on a topic, wherever in the county it applies.

The county also recommends saving AlertMarin’s number, 877-627-1411, as a phone contact, letting it bypass Do Not Disturb settings and adding a home landline as a second contact method.