[EAS] Wildfires -- Colorado re-learning the lessons California learned

[Robert Bunge]

"Few members of the public follow their local emergency agency
facebook accounts before an
emergency"

I've been watching events with interest, I have a lot of NOAA friends
who live in Louisville, a popular suburb of Boulder because of home
costs in Boulder.  I've stayed at hotels in Louisville many times.

The final numbers will be interesting, but I'd be careful about
statements like that above.   A basic, fundamental rule of social
media is that the news spreads quickly even though a person doesn't
follow an account.  An EM account is a multiplier.  Not that many
people need to see the order before it is propagated via friends and
family accounts, then spreads into the lesser known social media
channels like ifunny, instagram, other channels followed by different
audiences.  SM is not linear and not hierarchical.  It may help that
the audience in the area is aware of fire danger, just had a major
wind event and generally well educated.

Bob

On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 9:42 PM Sean Donelan sean at donelan.com> wrote:
>
> 35,000 people evacuated near Boulder Colorado due to wildfires.  No deaths
> reported yet.
>
> No Wireless Emergency Alerts used to notify the public to evacuate in
> those two towns.
>
> Instead, emergency managers posted messages on facebook or twitter, and
> local media. I expect we will re-learn the same lessons. Few members of
> the public follow their local emergency agency facebook accounts before an
> emergency.
>
> Neighboring Summit County (not were the wildfires are) did send a WEA
> about planned local energy company rolling blackouts tonight due
> to damaged infrastructure from the wildfires.
>
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