The recent LA wildfires had many issues throughout the duration of the events. From the water being turned off, to the quick spread of the fire, theories as to how the fires started, and finally the emergency alerts; lots of chaos was caused that could have been contained.
The WEAS alerts are authorized national, state and local authorities who send them through FEMA’s warning systems to a specific zone. They use your phone’s GPS, and if you’re in the zone with the emergencies, you would get an alert. The problem is, if you’re simply visiting someone in that zone, your phone would get that emergency alert. You might be thinking “that’s a problem how?” Well, should you get that notification, you could assume it’s an alert to evacuate YOUR home, so you panic and try to rush back to your house to grab your family and things and leave. This happened during the LA wildfires. Millions of people accidentally received an emergency alert to evacuate, causing unnecessary fear. In turn, tens of millions more people were bottle-necking the roads and those that really did need to evacuate had trouble getting out. There were unnecessary people on the roads. This didn’t happen just once either, twice an alert was sent to the wrong people.
Because of these incidents, this caused much distrust in a system that was implemented to save lives. That distrust could backfire and instead of saving the mass, the mass could ignore the alerts and potentially put themselves in harms way. There needs to be another platform they can turn to for up to date information.
This is another reason staying on top of major events is so incredibly important for local radio. When all else fails, WE are the ones the public turns to. We are the FACTS givers, which was proven during the election. We are the ones the terrified moms, the school teachers with students, the people in charge of their employees will turn to when it’s time to make decisions. We need to make sure we have plans in place for disasters. Have you and the staff discussed what to do or where to turn for real-time news? Are these plans in the studio for easy access? Things can turn at the drop of a dime. I suggest keeping a binder, yes a binder, in the studio with these plans. If the computer system goes down and all your plans are on google docs, you won’t be able to access those. Paper trails for instances like these are always best. Have these be part of your quarterly meetings so new staff members are aware of the binders and what’s in them.
Be prepared so they can be prepared.