Quite often during wildfires in California, government agencies struggle to communicate with the public, as was the case during the Woolsey Fire in 2018 and the Eaton and Palisades fires this year .

Some of those issues can be attributed to the general chaos of a major emergency — that's in addition to out-of-date technology and infrastructure, as well as conflicting procedures and inadequate training .

But there are things you can do to give yourself the best chance of receiving urgent messages, such as evacuation orders, during a disaster.

One of the most important is sign up for emergency text messaging services in your city or county. That’s one of the main ways emergency responders communicate with large numbers of people.

There’s Alert L.A. County , for example. But just

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