[EAS] NYC versus Joplin MO

[Sean Donelan]

On Sun, 28 Aug 2016, Mike McCarthy wrote:
> On the other hand, short fuse warnings where the short notice hazard is
> known by an AHJ (tornado, tsunami, avalanche, flash flood, dam breach,
> radiation hazard et. al.) are a different class of actionable warnings to
> an otherwise unknowing public.
>
> So let's not confuse the events of a micro area which really didn't need
> EAS to everything and everywhere else which regularly does and will in the
> future. And we can not presume existing non-hardened facilities will work
> in any or all events of significance.

NYC doesn't get many tornados.

Just before the Joplin, Missouri toronado in 2011 one station group went 
to wall-to-wall coverage and did a heroic job for days afterwards. It was an 
extraordinary job.

But in today's fragmented media market, how did all the other media 
perform?  Wall-to-wall on a few stations doesn't mean anything until after 
people learn that something is being covered something wall-to-wall.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/assessments/pdfs/Joplin_tornado.pdf

Emergency warnings don't have Nielsen ratings. What was the audience size 
for media outlets which carried a warning (not necessarily EAS, but just
covered the news) versus the entire population and other media?

There isn't much good nation-wide data.  There isn't even data about how 
many media outlets carry any type of non-mandatory emergency warnings.

On the other hand, one of NOAA's findings after Joplin, MO was too many 
tornado warnings had led people to disregard the warnings that day.

Wireless Emergency Alerts suck as a stand-alone tool, but more than likely 
the second thing people is check other media, tune to a news station, 
etc.