[EAS] Oroville Dame Evacuation

[Botterell, Arthur@CalOES]

You're right, Sean.  Of course part of that is that NWS doesn't technically have authority to issue evacuation orders.  In California that's pretty much the exclusive privilege of the counties.  And your point about FFW-fatigue is well taken.  Personally I was a bit disappointed that WEA wasn't used, as it would arguably have been a better (more targetable) tool.  But there'll be plenty of finger-pointing later, so let's not go there.

BTW, I've launched an effort to back out the use of EAS event codes from WEA, as they aren't really germane there and contribute little but confusion.  Especially when the new "public safety" message type goes into effect.  But old habits of thought die hard...

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: EAS [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Sean Donelan

On Mon, 13 Feb 2017, Botterell, Arthur at CalOES wrote:
> other.  It's very confusing for alert originators... all the more so 
> since the different codes may be programmed by individual stations for 
> different processing.

Often it seems the National Weather Service is the organization with people trained to create public alerts, and have extensive understanding of all the different alerting codes and warning systems.

A problem as seen in the Gatlinburg fire and the Oroville dam; the national weather service is not authorized to send EVI (or other non-weather emergency messages) through IPAWS to cell phones. IPAWS assumes EVI (and other NWEM) are supposed to be originated by civil authorities, and not back-feed from NWS.

The use of Flash Flood Warning (FFW) allowed NWS to send both EAS and WEA. Unfortunately, NWS' overuse of FFW means most EAS participants NEVER forward flash flood warnings, and ignore them.

Twitter, facebook and direct media blasts don't have those problems. 
Fortunately, the Oroville Dam warning happened during afternoon drive primetime, and peak public attention time.  If it had happened during the middle of the night, the results may have been different.

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