Positive Feedback from Sandy Cellphone Weather Alerts, NWS Official Says
The National Weather Service issued 17 wireless emergency alerts (WEA) during superstorm Sandy, and one NWS/National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration official said Wednesday that feedback from East Coast residents who received the text alert messages on their mobile phones was mostly positive. “We've had numerous reports of messages being sent within seconds, and only one or two reports of delays,” said Michael Gerber, NWS/NOAA Emerging Dissemination Technology Program Lead. The WEA broadcast system will need improvement in other areas of the country, particularly the West, but results on the East Coast are positive, he said during a FEMA webinar on its Internet-based integrated public alert and warning system (IPAWS).
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Local emergency managers must build relationships with wireless, TV, radio and cable operators in their region as they prepare to utilize WEAs and other emergency messages that will be distributed through IPAWS, said IPAWS Program Manager Manny Centeno. While new wireless alerts will give local managers more ability to broadcast “geotargeted” messages to specific areas being hit by weather, misuse of the technology could cause both the carriers and the public to lose faith in the system, officials told more than 90 callers into FEMA’s first webinar on IPAWS since its use during Sandy.
NWS did not issue a hurricane warning WEA because the storm wasn’t technically strong enough when it reached land, Gerber said. NWS did issue four flash flood warnings and 13 blizzard warnings, but since the storm itself only generated high-wind warnings, they weren’t issued as wireless alerts, he said. The NWS does not issue high-wind and severe thunderstorm warnings as WEAs because of their frequency, Gerber said.
Overuse can damage confidence in the system by both carriers and users, Gerber and Centeno said. “We're not going to tell you what to do; this has to be your call,” Centeno told the local emergency managers, saying urgency and severity are critical factors in evaluating a WEA alert. Training and testing are key to help reinforce good judgment and proper use of the technology, along with strong relationships between the service providers and local officials, Centeno said. “We don’t own the TV, the radio stations, cable TV or the cellphone towers,” he said. “They are essential. They own the system. Wrap your arms around them.” State emergency communication committees and their local and regional counterparts are good organizations through which to coordinate response procedures, he said.
NWS is still studying reaction to WEA messages, Gerber said. Feedback from East Coast population centers is favorable, while more problems have emerged in sparsely populated Western communities, he said. Because WEA messages are best delivered when “geotargeted” to a narrow population that would be immediately affected, they have proven effective in the dense East Coast communities where WEA can be sent from a limited number of cell towers, he said. Gerber said a July 26 tornado in Elmira, N.Y., is the WEA system’s biggest success. The twister tore a 10-mile path through an area not normally hit by such storms, destroying four homes and damaging 16 more, but only one minor injury was reported, a “miraculous” result Gerber said he believes was aided by the WEA alert.
The WEA system’s “most immediate need is improved geotargeting,” Gerber said. The FCC requires carriers only to provide county-level broadcast, though some are offering more targeted options, providing more incentive for emergency managers to coordinate with local carriers, he said. NWS alerts are often issued in polygon format, which helps better target areas geographically, and carriers can chose whether to issues WEA warnings for the entire county, the towers that cover the polygon warning area, or only the towers located in the warning area, which may not cover the entire area. A flash flood in Maricopa County, Ariz., demonstrates the problem faced in rural areas where geotargeting is more difficult, Gerber said. The WEA flash flood alert was needed in the southern areas of the county, but the entire county received the alerts, he said, leaving some confused but many annoyed.