[EAS] Deja Vu: Boulder officials questioned over effectiveness of emergency notification system

[Dave Kline]

Gee... don't all garage door openers have a way to release the mechanism, so it can be opened manually when the power is out. Or was it that those asking the FD to help, simply wanted someone else, who is not them, to do the door lifting? Will these same people die in a fire because the doors were all locked?

As a species, do we really deserve to survive?

On Fri, Jan 7, 2022 at 12:13 PM Bill Ruck ruck at lns.com> wrote:
>Because I now do a lot of work in Part 90 Public Safety I've worked with
>many dispatch centers.  No dispatch center that I am aware of has "too
>many people".  Most dispatch centers are short several positions and
>make up for this with mandatory overtime which, in turn, burns out their
>staff.

> From that perspective I can understand why they don't want anything
>that can cause a flood of 911 calls.

> From the same perspective I learned that during one of the big fires
>people were calling 911 asking for the fire dept to come and open their
>garage doors because the power was out.  The callers were irate when
>told that the FD was busy putting out the fire and couldn't help them.

>My recommendation is to understand the problem from a dispatch
>perspective.  Perhaps arrange to spend some time in your local dispatch
>center to learn their job.

>In my misguided youth I dispatched.  To Teamsters.  The nice part of
>public safety dispatching is that you likely will not be warned "There
>may be an accident in the parking lot".

>Bill Ruck
>Curmudgeon
>San Francisco

>On 1/7/2022 9:21 AM, Sean Donelan wrote:
>> . . .
>> Lack of 911 inquiries does not mean an alert was exceptionally clear and
>> no one had questions. The lack of 911 calls in response to an alert,
>> often reflects the fact that few people received any alert. Cities with
>> experience try to redirect people with questions to call 211 or 311
>> instead. But 911 is a victim of its own success.
>>
>> Is the trade off more deaths or more calls to 911 when choosing which
>> public alert and warning system to use?
>>

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Dave Kline - Solder Jockey
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