As the Canyon Road Fire raged recently near a Logan neighborhood, some who had signed up for the city’s alert system got the word: evacuate.
But other residents, living in the same area and enrolled for the same alerts, heard nothing.
“We feel like our communication system that we pay for and that we maintain and that we’ve had our residents sign up for failed us,” Logan Mayor Mark Anderson said at a City Council meeting last week. “I’ve heard from multiple people that they did not get contacted. … We’re going to try and find out what the break in that system is.”
Logan spokesperson George Woodward said that the city is working with Everbridge — the alert system Logan uses — to figure out what went wrong.
How it began
On the night of July 31, when about 100 homes were evacuated due to the blaze in east Logan near Utah State University, Woodward said two messages were sent. The first went to residents living within a mile of 600 East and Canyon Road. The second increased that radius by an additional half-mile.
To receive Logan’s alerts, residents have to set up an account with Everbridge and choose locations about which they would like to receive emergency notifications.
Everbridge did not respond to Salt Lake Tribune and Utah Public Radio requests for comment.
In the days since the fire, Woodward said, the city has heard from people who said they had signed up for the messages but did not receive them.
This was hardly the only time this fire season when alarm systems have sparked confusion. On Sunday afternoon, residents across northern Utah were erroneously told to evacuate from the Rocky Canyon Fire even though the flames were counties away.
According to Woodward, Logan has used Everbridge for emergency alerts since 2024, when the system was adopted by Cache, Box Elder, Davis, Morgan, Rich, and Weber counties and funded through a federal grant.
Though Woodward said city officials are unsure how many of the Canyon Road Fire evacuation messages went through and how many did not, he noted the city has heard feedback that indicates many of the notices were properly delivered.
At the same time, he said, the city has also received calls from residents concerned that they did not get the alerts. He said city officials also have noticed social media comments expressing worries about the system.
Woodward said city officials are talking with Everbridge and Weber County — the lead agent for the six-county contract with the company — to figure out why some residents were left in the dark.
Possible explanation
Though Logan has yet to understand what went awry, Woodward said, one possible issue could be that some residents, whose phones were set to “silent” or “do not disturb,” might not have been alerted to emergency messages because they were sent through the county’s non-emergency dispatch number.
“We are working to see if that can be changed in the system,” he said, “but we encourage users to include 435-753-7555 in the bypass settings.”
Besides nailing down what happened with the Everbridge system, Woodward said, Logan is exploring other communication methods. The spokesperson said the city would share more information once it is able to further analyze what went wrong.
For his part, the mayor said a remedy is needed.
“I’ve had so many people say, ‘I didn’t find out until my neighbor sent me a message,’ or ‘I didn’t find out until they knocked on my door,’ and that’s unacceptable,” Anderson said during the council meeting. “The process was in place to take care of that, but it didn’t work the way it’s supposed to.”
