[EAS] Oroville Dam Evacuation...oh that was close

[Sean Donelan]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2017, Botterell, Arthur at CalOES wrote:
> EAS, viewed for the moment as a competing product, offers them none of those benefits.  And, for reasons we understand but that they really don't care about, EAS shows few if any signs of self-improvement.
>
> Indeed, I fear some of them might say, "Yeah, well, we just moved over 180 thousand folks without using EAS, so what's your point?"

It shouldn't be viewed as an either/or, but rather all of the above -- 
EAS, WEA, Subcription-based alerts, telephone alerts, social media, 
traditional media, outdoor sirens, police/fire cars with loudspeakers....

In Oroville CA, 180,000 people were evacuated while a dam (spillway) 
did not collapse.

In Gatlinburg TN, 14 people died during a wildfire evacuation.

There will be after action studies, so lets not get too far ahead of 
ourselves.

A single incident is just a single incident. During a crisis people tend 
to revert to the familar, and it takes a lot of training to make things 
familar.  Fortunately, these types of incidents are rare.  And despite 
well-qualified incident commanders, once the decision is made to order a 
public alert (evacuation, shelter in place, whatever), people are still 
going to need to pull that three-ring binder off the self.