Not until the afternoon of July 6, when flood risk on the Guadalupe was still present but had passed its peak, does Kerr County seem to have utilized its access to the federally administered Wireless Emergency Alerts system, which can transmit messages to cellphones. There weren’t many details in the message even then. “High confidence of river flooding at the North Fork of the river,” it said. Go to a higher location.
According to Sutton, many local officials nationwide lack the skills necessary to write effective alert messages, and it’s more difficult than it may seem. The affected location, clear instructions on what to do, and the deadline for action are the three essential components of any alert message, but many don’t have any of them. Those in charge of writing the alerts can freeze in the face of a blank screen during a serious incident, according to Sutton. This is why authorities who use the Wireless Emergency Alerts system are not required to be credentialed or trained.
Although the program’s FEMA funding expired in May, she has instructed about 500 local officials on alert best practices. In addition, she and her colleagues have created a “warning lexicon” that governments can utilize to create actionable and understandable warning-message templates in everyday language. One of the few local governments in the San Francisco Bay Area to formally implement that system is San Mateo County.
According to San Mateo County’s emergency management director, Shruti Dhapodkar, December 5, 2024, was a wake-up call. Suddenly, a tsunami warning was in effect for her county. A message from the National Tsunami Warning Center appeared on people’s phones throughout the region after a significant earthquake occurred off the coast of California.
Then things began to go south: About half an hour later, San Mateo County inadvertently announced on social media that the warning was canceled. However, it hadn’t; only Hawaii was affected by the cancellation. Confusion was created when officials issued a corrective. It was hard to understand even the right message: For those who were unaware of the elevation of their property or the location of higher ground, its instruction to “move to high ground” was practically meaningless. San Mateo County was among the local governments that chose not to activate their tsunami sirens. Others, like Berkeley, did not issue mandatory evacuation orders.
The National Weather Service declared the threat to be over within an hour or so. However, the Bay Area’s crisis plans had failed if this had been a practice run for the big one.
In order to reduce conflicting information and the ensuing erosion of trust, San Mateo’s emergency-management department has since worked to coordinate among the 32 local agencies that have the authority to send emergency alerts. According to Dhapodkar, this will ensure that they all have a single voice the next time a potential disaster occurs. Residents will receive confirmation of any instructions they received right away if they seek it from a second or third agency.
There are now pre-written alert templates in plain, non-jargon language for a number of scenarios. Additionally, the county has developed a website that indicates whether an address qualifies as “high ground” and is educating locals on how to use it.
People must be informed in a variety of ways that they are in imminent danger during a disaster, which calls for thinking beyond social media and smartphone alerts. Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins, Sacramento County’s chief of emergency services, told me that a community’s entire messaging effort is “just increasing the odds of failure” because “the more opportunities you have to receive a message, the more likely you are to receive it and act on it.”
Her department has also installed a landline-alerting system in rural Sacramento County, allowing sheriff’s department personnel to drive around using loudspeakers to announce emergency messages. People can be alerted from the air by drones equipped with speakers.
But none of this guarantees that the county will reach every last person. According to Flynn-Nevins, emergency management “really requires people to understand their basic risks and believe that they’re at risk.” According to her, everyone ought to own a weather radio that can receive NOAA weather alerts. They don’t depend on the electrical grid, and you will be alerted loudly if the National Weather Service issues a warning in the middle of the night.
According to Dhapodkar, people are inherently complacent and assume that crucial information will reach them. However, merely keeping an eye on the weather forecast and thinking about how you would handle an upcoming risk can help you stay safe. The burden of emergency preparedness will only increase locally, down to each of us, as the planet warms and the frequency and severity of various weather disasters in the United States increase. Additionally, the Trump administration has indicated that it will withdraw more resources from the federal safety apparatus.
