Get Ready: Emergency Preparedness

1. Get Alerts

• AlertMarin: The county’s main emergency system. It sends calls, texts and email with evacuation orders and instructions. When you sign up, opt in to the significant weather, coastal flooding and king tides, and riverine and creek flooding groups. Landlines and some internet phone lines are registered automatically; cell phones and email must sign up. Alerts go out in English and Spanish.
• Town and city updates: Tiburon’s Notify Me and Tiburon Talk; Belvedere’s Belvedere Breeze.
• SNAP 840 AM: When the peninsula’s emergency alert siren sounds, tune a battery radio to 840 AM for local instructions; it keeps working when power and cell service are out. You can also get SNAP notices by email, text or phone: email Laurie Nilsen or call her at 415-789-2805 or 415-435-7386 with how you’d like to be reached.
• Siren tests: The peninsula’s five sirens sound for 15 seconds at noon on the first Saturday of each month. They’re at the fire stations on Tiburon Boulevard and Paradise Drive, Del Mar Middle School, the town corporation yard behind Reed Elementary and Sanitary District No. 5’s Paradise Cove treatment plant. Southern Marin Fire’s siren at Bel Aire Elementary and a Tiburon mobile unit can also broadcast spoken instructions.
• Apps:
  • Genasys Protect (evacuation zones and orders): iPhone · Android
  • Watch Duty (wildfires): iPhone · Android
  • MyShake (earthquake early warnings): iPhone · Android
  • PulsePoint (local emergency calls): iPhone · Android
  • AirNow (air quality): iPhone · Android
  • Red Cross Emergency (severe weather alerts): iPhone · Android
  • Red Cross First Aid (first-aid steps): iPhone · Android
• The Hi-Lo siren: A two-tone, high-low siren from Belvedere Police, Tiburon Police or Marin County Sheriff’s vehicles means an evacuation order is in place. Leave immediately.
• 2-1-1: During a disaster, the county’s 2-1-1 line has shelter, health and recovery information.
• 911: Call only for a life-threatening emergency, so lines stay open for people who need them.
• The Ark: Storm and tide watch and breaking-news alerts in your browser (button at the bottom of any page).

2. Know Your Zone and Your Way Out

• Your zone: Marin issues evacuation orders by zone. Look up your zone on Genasys Protect and write it down with your go bag.
• Ways out: Only two roads lead off the peninsula, Tiburon Boulevard and Paradise Drive. Know more than one way out of your neighborhood by car, on foot and by water, and plan where you’d go.
• Blue “E” signs: On Tiburon streets, installed starting in 2022, they point toward lanes, paths and steps that lead out of an area. Fire officials say they’re for awareness, not official evacuation routes: the safest way out depends on where an emergency is.
• Community refuge areas: Southern Marin Fire has picked last-resort spots, open ground such as the Bel Aire Elementary School parking lot, where people who can’t get out safely can wait while a fire passes.
• Belvedere evacuation tags: Free from the Belvedere Police Department. Hang yours where it’s visible from the street when you leave, so responders can skip your house and reach people who still need help. 415-435-3266.
• Evacuation maps: Belvedere; Strawberry and the rest of Southern Marin Fire’s district, SMFD evacuation maps.
• Your address: Make it easy to find. Seconds count when responders are looking for your house; post clear, reflective address numbers visible from the street.

3. Build a Go Bag and a Stay Box

A go bag for each person and pet, packed now, because you may have only minutes to leave; a stay box with enough water and nonperishable food for 5 to 7 days if you shelter at home. Add a flashlight, battery radio, first-aid kit, medications, chargers, copies of important documents, a manual can opener and a multipurpose tool.

• Checklists: Tiburon go bag and stay box (PDF); Belvedere’s go bag and stay box (PDFs).
• Water: Store 1 gallon per person, and per pet, per day. Your water heater holds 30 to 50 gallons you can drain in a pinch; filter it, since sediment settles at the bottom.
• A 10-minute list: Write down the irreplaceable things you’d grab with only 10 minutes’ warning, and keep copies of insurance, medical records, deeds and titles, and a household inventory somewhere off-site.
• Keep it fresh: Replace emergency food, water and batteries once a year; flush sediment from the water heater yearly; choose low-sodium foods, which won’t make you thirsty; if you purify water with bleach, use plain, unscented bleach.
• Your car: It’s a resource. Keep the tank or battery at least a quarter full, keep the keys in one place, carry small bills, and remember its radio can pick up 840 AM and its battery can charge phones.
• Car and work kits: Keep comfortable shoes, a change of clothes, a flashlight, snacks, water and first aid in each, in case a disaster hits while you’re away from home.
• Under the bed: Keep shoes, a flashlight, work gloves and your glasses in a bag tied to the bed frame, so you can get out over broken glass if a quake hits at night. With the stay box at home and a kit in the car, that puts supplies in all three places you’re most likely to be.
• ReadyMarin: The county’s full checklists and planning guides.

4. Make a Plan

• Meeting places: Agree on two meeting places if you’re apart when disaster strikes, one near home and one outside the area.
• Out-of-area contact: Choose one, ideally 200 miles or more away, everyone checks in with: long-distance calls often get through when local ones don’t. Write important numbers on paper in case your phone dies.
• Schools: Ask your children’s schools about their evacuation plans.
• Pets, children and anyone who needs extra help: Plan for pets, children, older adults and anyone who needs extra help. Pets may not be allowed in Red Cross shelters, so plan where yours would go, and pack comfort items for children. Marin Center for Independent Living helps people with disabilities and older adults prepare.
• Medical equipment: If anyone in your home relies on electrical medical or mobility equipment, arrange backup power or a place to go.
• Insurance: Review your policies: standard homeowner policies usually don’t cover flood damage.
• Document your home: Walk through every room recording video or photos of your belongings, open closets and drawers, and store the files off-site or in the cloud; it speeds any claim.
• Practice twice a year: Walk the family through the plan every six months, including both meeting places and your way out of the neighborhood, and update contacts and medications when you do.
• Seniors, schools and congregations: Ready.gov has planning guides for older adults and for kids and families, and the federal Center for Faith points houses of worship to preparedness training and grants.
• Worksheets: Belvedere’s Make a Plan worksheet (PDF) and Tiburon’s 5 Steps to Plan for an Emergency (PDF) walk you through it.

5. Get Trained

Tiburon’s Get Ready classes teach what to do before, during and after a regional disaster; more than 2,500 peninsula residents have taken one. Can’t make a class? The town offers a self-study course with its disaster preparedness manual and a recorded class. Questions or to volunteer: Laurie Nilsen, the peninsula’s emergency operations coordinator, 415-789-2805 or 415-435-7386, lnilsen@townoftiburon.gov. More on Tiburon’s emergency preparedness page.

The Red Cross offers CPR classes online and in person. Marin County also offers Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training in first aid, light search and rescue and disaster organization. The county doesn’t put walk-up volunteers to work in a disaster; it sends them to Marin VOAD member groups. Trained, registered volunteers such as CERT members can be called up as Disaster Service Workers.

The Tiburon Fire Protection District teaches CPR, AED and first aid. In a widespread emergency, the district warns, crews will put life-threatening calls first and other help may take longer, which is why training and preparing ahead matter. 415-435-7200.

6. Know Your Neighbors

• Your neighbors: When disaster strikes, neighbors turn to neighbors first. Meet yours now, share contact information, and prepare and train together.
• Belvedere Block Captains: Volunteers who get to know their neighbors, help them prepare and connect them with first responders in an emergency. Program chair Adam Gavzer, 415-505-0714.
• Be Ready Belvedere: The city’s preparedness program works on temporary refuge locations, emergency medical supplies and resident training.
• Homeowner and property owner associations: Often the fastest way to reach a neighborhood. Officers: tell us who to contact below.

7. Know Your Shutoffs

• Gas: Shut it off only if you smell gas, hear hissing, see the meter spinning fast, or a big fire is near. Turn the valve a quarter turn so it’s crosswise to the pipe, using a non-sparking wrench; keep one attached to the meter. Once it’s off, only PG&E or a licensed plumber should turn it back on. Flexible connectors on gas appliances, including the water heater, help prevent leaks.
• Water: The main valve is usually at the curb and may need a T-handle key. Shut it off for a major leak or to keep contaminated water out after a big quake. Know where your sprinkler shutoff is, too.
• Electricity: If you see sparks, smell burning insulation or have water near outlets, switch off individual circuits first, then the main. To restore, main first, then circuits, with appliances unplugged.

Who Plans for the Peninsula

The Belvedere Tiburon Emergency Preparedness Council, a joint advisory body to both councils, meets the third Tuesday of each month at 4 p.m., open to the public. Marin County adopted a new Emergency Operations Plan on June 9, 2026, its first rewrite since 2014, with a 12-page public summary. The plan assumes local government resources may run out within the first 72 hours of a major disaster, and that bridge closures could cut Marin off from San Francisco, the East Bay and Sonoma. Marin Humane leads animal sheltering; service animals stay with their owners in shelters, and pets are housed nearby when they can’t.

Businesses and Rentals

• Businesses: Southern Marin Fire’s business guide covers inspection checklists, tidal-flood readiness and fire-protection systems.
• Short-term rental owners: Share Southern Marin Fire’s Good Neighbor Guide (PDF) with guests, so they know the emergency rules.

Report a Problem

• Tiburon flooding or drainage on public property: Public Works, 415-435-7399; after hours, Tiburon Police, 415-789-2800.
• Belvedere: Police, 415-435-3266.
• Downed power line: Call 911 first, then PG&E, 800-743-5002.