[EAS] NWS Impact Based Warnings

[Tim Stoffel]

Tim--
As much as I agree with your sentiments, Clay is correct. Most people don't pay attention to warning messages, especially weather warnings

Adrienne,
    I will respectfully disagree. If people stayed behind, they had likely heard from somewhere or someone that there was danger. So in many cases, I doubt you could have convinced these people to leave, especially in a Sandy-type situation. So, there comes a point when it is futile to try and disseminate emergency messages any further than they are. It is a total waste of our resources as a society to constantly warn people who either won't listen, or have chosen not to heed the warning. This is one of the consequences of freedom. But instead, we spend ever increasing amounts of public money building ever more elaborate emergency information systems. We as a society need to not take on the burden of guilt that arises from not trying to 'protect' those who aren't going to use common sense.
    This political statement in mind, what can be done to reach the most people as quickly as possible when a REAL emergency exists, within the limits of reason? How do we make sure that really necessary weather alerts do not come across as 'wolf alerts'? We, too get these clusters of severe thunderstorm warnings here in western Nevada. Now, if such an alert could be targeted to just people in the affected region, I bet the alerts would be far more effective. Instead, we get days here where we will get eight severe thunderstorm warnings. (I am recording each and every alert we get, BTW.) Someone watching/listening to our air will see/hear all these alerts, and in many cases start to ignore them after the first couple. Eventually, one will come along that does really affect his area, but by then the TV is off due to annoyance. Another aspect of this is, consider a viewer at home might get an EAS alert on their radio/TV, their NWS receiver will alarm, their cellphone will ring, and the electronic billboard visible out the window will flash a weather warning. How much is too much? In a tornado warning, this might be appropriate. But for a blizzard warning, these might be issued several days in advance. The evening news might be good enough for that, and indeed we find that there were relatively few EAS alerts issued during Sandy due to the fact the media had been saturated with news about Sandy for the past several days.
    So again, we have to realize there are practical limits to what we can do to warn people. The warning dissemination methods used must match the severity of the warning. The warning needs to clearly state what one needs to do. And the realization needs to exist that some people will simply choose not to listen, or ignore the message if they did listen.  This is a free country. People have the right to ignore a warning, but only at the consequence of their own lives. Nothing we can do will change everyone's behavior, much as we might like to. (And this all-inclusive thinking is part of the reason that our Government has grown into the huge, controlling, tax-sucking monster it has.)

Tim Stoffel