[EAS] WEA used in NYC bombings

[John Willkie]

All;

No, I don't have much concern about earthquakes, but I know where the local fault lines are.  Were I asked, I'd list the Yellowstone caldera as having the greatest disaster peril, with the Azores the second (potential 600-foot Tsunami hitting Florida) and the Juan De La Fuca Trench that Clay alluded to being the third.  The potential impact from the Caldera popping again will be massive; EAS might be able to warn people in Phoenix and my area to be on the lookout for falling, semi-cooled chunks of lava.  Miami will probably have 6 hours notice, assuming everything works out well, but evacuating to high land in Georgia might take longer than that.  On a recent trip to Portland, I was shocked by the dense development along the river.  There is plenty of high land, however.

Firestorms are a good example of a peril that can travel than EAS.  The Cedar fire in 2003 was a good example.  The fire was started by a stupid hunter who was lost and lit a fire as sunset approached so that people would look for him.  We were in Santa Ana conditions (hot dry conditions usually accompanied by hot winds from the desert ultimately going off-shore).  Overnight, the winds were calm; just another brush fire.  Early the next morning, the winds picked up.  This video, graphic as it is, understates the peril https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=cedar+fire+time+lapse.  The fire was in a sparsely-populated area, but at one point the hot winds created a firestorm whose advance was estimate at up to 60 mph.

My brother's family at the time lived in the path of the fire.  Their only escape path was to the East; towards the path of the fire.  They made it out, and fortunately for them, the winds shifted and stopped its advance 2 miles to the East of their home.  He was the last person out of the house, and he clearly saw open flame on his escape.  If conditions had been slightly different ...

People were shocked that they weren't properly alerted.  I can't remember if there were EAS messages; I can't remember news of any.  But, who is listening to the radio or watching TV early on Sunday morning?  Non-professionals even asked why their TVs couldn't alert them to the danger.  Due to 60+ years of fire-management (they called it 'fire fighting' for a long time) strategies in the urban-wildland interface, we've made fires more intense over time.

Mt. Tamalpais is just a bit more extreme than most.  But, I'm not prepared, due to the Malthusian influences from the Club of Rome crowd), that burning the mountain down to the bay is more a bug than a feature.  Isn't it only rich folk who live in Marin?  Who uses the mountain but hikers and bikers?  The trails will still be there were the mountain all ash. 

People need new forms of being alerted that don't require their radio or tv to be on, with actionable information, and few to none in-band testing.  Actionable information.  Not alerts about fires in remote areas that couldn't possibly affect.  EAS, unfortunately, is not that system.  Nor is NWS weather radio.

Best

John