The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Reverse 911® system is the premier community notification tool designed to enhance emergency preparedness and facilitate urgent and necessary notifications to citizens during emergent events.

With the ability to send a recorded message to Santa Barbara County homes on local phone lines within minutes, we have had constant success since our Reverse911® system first went online.  Our Reverse911® has been relied on during the recent fires, flood warnings, and is used even more frequently for missing person notifications and other neighborhood disasters and community events.

In addition to having an existing E-911 phone database, we also have the ability to manually add a phone number to an address that does not already have an existing land-line, in order to improve emergency notification results to affected neighborhoods.   If you are interested in registering your wireless device, use the form below.

Some frequently asked questions:

 
Do you already have my phone number? 

Our database is provided by Verizon, and includes their customers.  Verizon also consolidates address information that other providers (including Cox Communications) supply them and provides them to us. Please check with your phone provider to see if they are E911 compliant.  Registering additional numbers is voluntary.

Can I have my phone number be associated with multiple locations?

No.  Our Reverse 911® system is not able to allow a single number to be associated with more than one address in Santa Barbara County. 

Is my number safe?

Yes.  Your number is only used for emergency notifications, and is kept locally.  We do not sell or distribute your information for any purpose not directly related to emergency notification.

I have call screening/interception to discourage telemarketers.  Will I get the message?

It depends.  If your telephone system simply requires a valid caller ID, we will get through.  Our caller IDs will show as “Sheriff Alert” or “COSB”  However, if your telephone system requires a caller to first say their name,  or who they are, then wait until the call is accepted, the Reverse911® system will not be able to get through to you.   During a community disaster, please consider disabling such blocking. 

I live in a remote area, sometimes my location is hard to find.

Notifications are usually geographically based. If you live in a very rural location, please let us know how to find your address.  If you have GPS coordinates, even better. PO Boxes will not work for Reverse 911® service.

Will my telephone get called if the power goes out?

If your telephone is “corded”, meaning powered by the phone line, yes.  If you have a cordless phone, only if the base unit has battery or backup power. 

Can I add more than one cell phone number to my address?

It depends.  The more numbers we have for an address, the longer it takes for the system to reach all the community phone numbers involved in the event.  Please add numbers responsibly by only including people that are prepared to handle any emergency for your address.

Important:

Entries are entered by hand on a regular basis.  If you are submitting this information during a significant community event, we cannot guarantee your information will take effect immediately.

Finally, No single system or technology is perfect- Completion of this form cannot guarantee that you will receive timely notification in the event of a large scale community emergency, due to the unforeseen problems that such an emergency could create.  Should such a situation arrive, it is important that you also continue to monitor other public safety warning systems whenever possible.