[EAS] Fire

[Adrienne Abbott]

Bill--
The decision on whether to use EAS and/or WEA to issue a warning message
rests with the emergency officials. The problem with using EAS activations
for fire evacuations is that there's no way to specifically target those
affected. It's the same argument we've seen over and over again...In the
Loma Fire, the area that's affected straddles two large counties and most of
the people in those counties aren't affected by the fire but they would hear
the activation and swamp 9-1-1 call centers, fire departments, law
enforcement agencies, and other local officials with questions about "Does
this include me? There's no fire where I am." 

We've used EAS activations for fire evacuations here in Nevada when fires
threatened large suburbs. But several years ago a county manager issued an
EAS activation for a fire that threatened a couple dozen homes in a very
rural suburb. Most of the homes were unoccupied because the residents were
at work. The activation was sent to 18 counties in two states, including a
couple areas where other fires were burning but not threatening any homes.
The state emergency manager called the county manager on the carpet for
unnecessarily alarming so many people. However, we were able to turn the
session into a selling point for CAP EAS. Still, I think some emergency
managers came away with the impression that they better think twice before
issuing an EAS activation of any kind. 

The Blue Cut fire threatened thousands of homes in dozens of suburbs in San
Bernardino County last month. More than 80,000 people were told to leave
their homes but to  the best of my knowledge, EAS wasn't used.

Adrienne Abbott
Nevada EAS Chair
NVBA  ABIP  Inspector

-----Original Message-----
From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On
Behalf Of Bill Ruck

Starting this afternoon a structure fire moved up to Mount Loma Prieta.  It