[EAS] California WEA

[Suzanne Goucher]

I question whether this is a valid use of EAS, IPAWS or WEA.  Emergency alerting should be reserved for sudden, unforeseen or unpredictable evens or circumstances, the nature of which preclude advance warning, and which present an imminent danger to life or property.  

An emergency does not necessarily call for an alert warning.  Maine was under a drought emergency for much of the summer due to lack of rain, but it didn't give rise to an EAS/IPAWS/WEA alert. It was a long-fused event, of which much of the public was aware, and it required no action on the part of the public, other than possibly "stop watering your lawn."  

Presumably, in the current circumstances, the public has been well informed through normal news channels about shutdown orders, wear-mask orders, and the like.  I don't see the need for emergency alerts.  Too many alerts lead to the car-alarm syndrome.  

Those of you who have sway with your local alerting officials, I urge you to encourage them to stand down and stop using emergency alert channels for this situation.

> On Dec 10, 2020, at 8:27 PM, Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 10 Dec 2020, Ted Langdell wrote:
>> Thanks for the list. Neither Yuba or Sutter county are on this particular list, although we now are under stay at home orders.
> 
> The California Office of Emergency Services will be issuing a WEA COVID19 alert in additional counties on Friday, December 11, 2020
> around Noon (12:00 p.m.) local time.
> 
> I haven't seen the new list of counties from CALOES yet.
> 
> https://covid19.ca.gov/
> 
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