[EAS] San Jose CA midnight evacuation order

[Adrienne Abbott]

But Dave, that's the way things are done here in the West. Deputies/police
officers, regular and reserves, are almost always sent door-to-door in an
evacuation area, whether it's a flood or fire. During the Oroville
evacuation the deputies were taking the names of people who elected to
remain in their homes. During the Lake Fire evacuations they were also
asking residents for information about their next-of-kin, a procedure which
I'm sure made more than one resident think twice about staying put. 

Yes, it seems like a tremendous waste of resources and additional warning
messages such as EAS and WEA as well as telephone notifications could make
this door-to-door process a lot more efficient. The door-to-door procedures
are done to make sure everyone gets the message, knows where to go and how
to get there and to make sure people who have medical or other issues have a
way to evacuate their homes. It's also a way to make sure people understand
that the evacuation notice includes them.  How often have you seen a sound
bite on the news where someone says that they didn't think the evacuation
order applied to them? "I didn't know it meant me"...

There are also legal complications with an evacuation order such as who has
jurisdiction and who can order people to leave their homes. Not all
California officials know what EAS is, or that they have the ability to
access both EAS and WEA through a CAP program. And sometimes, like the Lyon
County "dam failure" here in Nevada, officials know about EAS, WEA and CAP
but still choose to use another alerting method. We aren't in the business
of psychoanalyzing emergency managers when they make a decision about public
warnings. All we can do is make sure that EAS is working 24/7.

Adrienne Abbott
Nevada EAS Chair

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

So some gov't official decides that "normal" people should be fast asleep at
that hour and are better off not knowing what hit them, than suffering
through an evacuation?