[EAS] Oroville Dame Evacuation

Mon Feb 13 14:36:03 CST 2017

I looked at the particular office in this discussion and it has issued one (1) flash flood warning (EAS/WEA) in 2017 with places north of the Oroville Dam having
received 110 inches of rainfall since October 1. I looked back in 2015 and 2016 and the total was 5 and 4 each year for that office. 

How is 1 FFW message in 2017, for the structural issues of Oroville Dam within the counties evacuation orders, over warning or not helpful or not worthy to broadcast?

Yes, I am aware of the monsoon season in southern California which is entirely different scope both spatially and temporal often having 10s of individual real flash flood events
requiring separate notification through out July to September season. The fact that the entire county and thus the listening area in the counties (large or small) gets an EAS message
is the old part of the process. Yes we have work to fix the challenge of a different climate and impact for Socal, but using this as a reason to not forward messages on a completely unrelated
matter is not public service. 

Alex

Thanks, Alex

Alex Tardy
Warning Coordination Meteorologist, Manager
Emergency Preparedness and Partner Collaboration
Education and Outreach Coordinator 
Media and Public Information Officer
Cell: 858-442-6016  Office: 858-675-8700
Skywarn Program Manager
NOAA/National Weather Service
11440 W. Bernardo Court, SanDiego, CA
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On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 10:57 AM, Botterell, Arthur at CalOES <Arthur.Botterell at caloes.ca.gov> wrote:
>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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