[EAS] San Jose CA midnight evacuation order

[Dave Kline]

I may be naive and I may not know how it works in the west.
Maybe I just work in a Mayberry market and don't understand what goes on in the big cities.
If that's how it works "in the west", then I'm glad to be "in the east."
At least I know the word will get out even if our only means of notification is by Pony Express.

Maybe I'm just spoiled because the local EM's and broadcasters in this area work together on this stuff.
Not really much else to do 'round these parts after the sun goes down ya know.
So we get together at the feed store, the ladies bring pie and sarsaparilla, and we work it out.

I have no trouble with the door to door teams as there will be people who don't get the alert because they are already asleep.
Those people are truly putting other's lives ahead of themselves and are the true heros of these events.
But the decision, for whatever reason that all avenues for alerting the public are not used, is to me incomprehensible.
To not use EAS or WEA because most folks are asleep, is actively neglecting those who might not be.
And yes, it is more efficient use of the door to door teams if some of the households, even if just 5 or 10% who got an EAS or WEA message already know what's going on and are making arrangements to evacuate when the knock on the door comes? It just means the rescue workers can move on to the next house that much quicker.

Legal complications, EM turf wars, EM lack of knowledge that EAS/WEA exists or how to use it should be addressed. It should not be an excuse.
IMHO anyone who calls himself an EM or has a position where the lives and property of people in their jurisdiction are their responsibility yet who don't know, understand or utilize all of the options, should be working somewhere else. Aren't there also legal implications for failing to use available methods to get the word out? 
Or have those folks forgotten that we are talking about real people and not just statistics?

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Dave Kline   UNO-TV/Mav Radio/KVNO
University of Nebraska at Omaha
6001 Dodge St. Omaha, NE  68182  CPACS 200

On Feb 23, 2017, at 11:50 AM, Adrienne Abbott wrote:

>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?

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