[EAS] San Joaquin EVI Monday night

[Sean Donelan]

San Joaquin County issued an IMMEDIATE EVACUATION message on Monday night 
due to a levee break on the Stanislaus river.

The format of the IPAWS message was good.  It included both EAS and WEA 
sections (CMAS text, Description and Instructions), with a polygon warning 
area.

Based on social media the EAS and WEA quickly alerted the public in the 
area as the warning "doorbell." People almost immediately started looking 
for additional information sources. People were tweeting and writing 
messages on social media "Did you see that on TV?" "Everyone's phone at 
the game started ringing."

The National Weather Service followed up with a FLASH FLOOD WARNING for 
the levee break, but there were also lots of other FFW messages on 
Monday.

Local news stations had text crawls quickly, and live news reports in
15-30 minutes.  There was one misfire at one station, which had some old 
evacuation text about Oroville instead of San Joaquin. Other nearby county 
EMAs needed to do some rumor control, and clarify their counties were not 
affected by the evacuation.

WEA and EAS got people's attention, and the public quickly started looking 
for information.

WEA and EAS do not replace other news distribution channels.  They are 
still need for details and clarifications.

I only saw one complaint about the EVI interrupting a TV show.