TACOMA — A system set up to send
emergency alerts to thousands of cellphone users warning them of natural
disasters and missing children has experienced problems during its rollout in
Washington state, the News Tribune reported today.
The mobile notification system has helped authorities find at
least two missing children as a result of Amber Alerts sent to cellphones in
the state.
But it also mistakenly warned people in the lowlands of Western
Washington of a blizzard that was happening in the Cascade Mountains, and it
alerted others in Western Washington of potential flash floods thousands of
miles away, in Puerto Rico.
Still, officials said, the weather warnings have saved countless
people elsewhere in the country. The system is working, they said, despite the
problems.
“To some people these things are annoying. But when you look at it
as the big picture of saving lives, as a community as a whole, it’s the right
thing to do,” said Ted Buehner, warning coordination meteorologist at the
National Weather Service in Seattle. “These are targeted for immediate, life-threatening,
hazardous events.”
In Connecticut last July, for example, a camp director got 29
children to safety after getting a tornado warning on her cellphone moments
before the storm touched down where she and the campers had been. Tornado
warnings in the Midwest also were responsible for saving many lives, Buehner
said.
Congress approved the national Wireless Emergency Alert system in
2006 to provide instant warnings from emergency agencies throughout the
country. To get the word out, the system uses cellphone carriers to complement
other alerts sent out on television and radio.
But in a few cases, the system has confused both cellphone users
and the emergency agencies in charge of implementing it, according to the News
Tribune.
Three of the eight messages sent in Washington state were sent too
broadly, reaching people in the wrong areas. Two others went out before dawn,
raising questions about what people were expected to do in the middle of the
night once they received those alerts.
Carri Gordon, the Amber Alert coordinator for the Washington State
Patrol, said the rollout of the system was especially complicated.
“There’s a lot of players in this and a lot of pieces that all
have to work together,” Gordon told the News Tribune. “There really is no one
agency that’s in charge of the whole process.”
Worried that cellphone users may opt out en masse of getting the
alerts, state and federal agencies have made changes. They are also working to
educate the public about the alerts.
The committee that oversees the national system decided last year
to eliminate blizzards and ice storms from its list of emergency alerts,
Buehner said. The list now covers tornados, hurricanes, extreme wind, typhoons,
dust storms and flash flooding. The committee also added tsunamis in February.
After an Amber Alert went out to hundreds of people at 3:30 a.m.
on April 28, alerting them to a missing child, some who received the message
wondered what they were supposed to do about it so early in the morning.
The Washington State Patrol, which oversees the state’s Amber
Alerts, later said the message wasn’t meant to wake up residents. Agency
officials said they learned that they were responsible for setting time
parameters on the alerts to prevent them going out late at night.
The agency set those time parameters in June. Now, the alert
system is programmed not to send alerts after 10 p.m. or before 6 a.m.
Still, the alert served a purpose. The missing 1-year-old boy was
found safe in Fife that morning as a result of the cellphone broadcast, Gordon
said.
“These are useful, and they’ve proven very successful in locating
these kids who have been abducted,” she told the News Tribune.
In December 2012, the National Weather Service in Seattle sent a
blizzard alert to people living near the Cascades, but the technology of the
national system forwarded it to all the counties in the region. Some people
living in Pierce County where the storm never reached were puzzled to get the
message.
But Herb Munson told the newspaper he hoped the confusion doesn’t
dissuade the agency from issuing such alerts.
“I would like to get such messages when there is a threat to
nearby areas,” Munson told the newspaper.
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