[EAS] LA Times: Reeling from the deadliest wildfire in a, century Maui sees ghosts from Californias past

[Rod Zeigler]

We can rail against EAS with all of its faults and try to improve it in 
spite of governmental "help" but it, and any other system, is going to 
fail miserably when confronted with a situation that has never occurred 
previously nor ever expected to occur.
One of the things State Plans have to cover are lists of expected alerts 
for their State. In Nebraska we do not have avalanche watches or 
warnings in that list. I got to thinking and I suppose that if there was 
an unprecedented (a word I have learned to hate) snow event in the 
western part of the State it would be possible for an avalanche to 
happen that would close down highways and reach homes, however the odds 
of that happening are probably greater than hitting the lottery.
I highly doubt any wildfire alerts are in the Hawaii list and conversely 
in any EAS appliances in the State. If they aren't in the list, and none 
of the EAS participants had them in their appliances you could send wall 
to wall fire alerts and they would not do anything. Using another alert 
might have worked IF there would have been a way to put fire messaging 
in it.
I am sure the after action de-brief will discuss this ad-nauseum and we 
will just have to see what comes of it.

Do we need a "General Alert" that could cover unforeseen incidents that 
EM would be able to enter text covering the incident???
Something to think about.

Rod