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a day ago
- Climate
- IOL News
Understanding Flash Flood risks in Texas Hill Country: why were residents unprepared?
A man conducts a search near the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, on Sunday. Devastating floods swept through Central Texas on Thursday evening and Friday morning. Image: Desiree Rios/The Washington Post The deluge that killed nearly 80 people along fast-surging Texas rivers early Friday struck a region that has grappled with deadly floods before. And yet, the magnitude of the disaster exposed gaps in its ability to warn people, including a delayed flood risk alert from Kerr County and stalled development of a flood monitoring system. This swath of Central Texas is the most flash-flood prone region in the country, and officials know the Hill Country's terrain can turn slow, shallow rivers into walls of water. But even as weather forecasts began to hint at the potential for heavy rain on Thursday, the response exposed a disconnect: Few, including local authorities, prepared for anything but their normal Fourth of July. When the precipitation intensified in the early morning hours Friday, many people failed to receive or respond to flood warnings at riverside campsites and cabins that were known to be in the floodplain. A review of wireless emergency data from a public database that pulls in Federal Emergency Management Agency's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System shows that the county did not send its first Amber Alert-style push until Sunday. Days after the state had launched a full-scale rescue effort, continued rains appeared to prompt an alert sent to much of Kerr County urging people to 'move to higher ground' because of 'high confidence of river flooding.' The county has sent such alerts in past emergencies. Until then, most cellphone alerts were coming from the National Weather Service's Austin/San Antonio station. But some alerts about life-threatening flooding didn't come until the predawn hours, and to areas where cellular reception may have been spotty. Video Player is loading. 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Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad Loading Members of Texas EquuSearch conduct a search near the Guadalupe River in Hunt, Texas, on Sunday. Image: Desiree Rios/The Washington Post The disaster has prompted renewed emphasis on a years-long push for a comprehensive flood monitoring system in Kerr County. And it has raised questions about whether anything could be enough to prepare and protect communities in places like this, where cellphone-based alerts can be unreliable, emergency managers have limited resources and the potential for disaster is high. 'That's the part that hurts,' said Rosalie Castro of Kerrville, Texas. 'We had no warning.' For hours on Friday, the 60-year-old waited for word from her nephew who lived in a trailer home park near the Guadalupe River. The first alert Castro received on her phone came around 7:58 a.m., but her nephew was caught off guard. 'If it wasn't for his dogs barking, he wouldn't have awakened on time,' Castro said. He survived. But his neighbor, Julian Ryan, cut an artery while rushing to save his family. Melinda Cortez had never been to Kerrville. She, her family, and some good friends rented a few cabins at the HTR campground along the Guadalupe River for the Fourth of July river festival. After dinner at Howdy's Restaurant, they sat on the porch, talking and laughing until about midnight. It was lightly raining. At 4:45 a.m., she awoke to another camper banging on the cabin door, yelling to get out, now. Water was everywhere. A minute later, the camp sent a text to guests that 'we have just received notice from the fire department that we need to evacuate the park due to flooding,' according to a message reviewed by The Washington Post. Water from the river, which had been about a football field away from her cabin steps, was up to the porch. A Ford F-150 truck and trailer floated by. Glancing at her phone, she noticed two new alerts: one was a flash-flood warning, the other was from the campground, sent five minutes before the man pounded on their cabin door, telling them to evacuate. By then, the water was up to their waist. Cortez, like many people who were in town or visiting that weekend, didn't know the area could flood. There are more than a dozen camps in the Guadalupe River region - and many are adjacent to or partially inside high-risk flood zones, according to maps from FEMA . But Cortez lives in Austin, a few hours away, and didn't know about the risk, or its history. While enjoying the river that day, she had not seen warnings, and 'the camp didn't say anything,' she said. 'I never thought that whole area could flood,' she said. For emergencies and disasters, leaders often use a patchwork of alerts and warnings to try to get to different populations. The National Weather Service, which had been warning about the coming rains and potential for flash floods for days, has stations across the state. Its Austin/San Antonio office sent alerts on social media as well as using wireless emergency alerts, which use cellphone towers to target people in a specific area. Local authorities, including the police, often post updates to their Facebook pages and websites. Kerrville and the county use a web-based notification system called CodeRED, which people have to sign up for. The holes in this warning system are not new and highlight the challenge of urgently communicating weather risks as a warming climate drives more atmospheric moisture, which can come down in sudden bursts. And in remote areas, with fewer resources for emergency management operations, the breakdown can be even worse. Kerrville police, the Kerr County sheriff and other official pages did not mention looming weather and its risks on their social media profiles, posting on July 3 about the upcoming Fourth of July river festival. Officials from those agencies, county government and the county judge did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a Friday news conference, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said he couldn't say why areas including Camp Mystic, where dozens of people died or were still missing, weren't evacuated - they hadn't seen this disaster coming. 'Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming,' Kelly said. 'We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States and we deal with floods on a regular basis. When it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what's happened here. None whatsoever.' Emergency management and weather experts say it's often a challenge to warn and get alerts to an entire community, especially when disasters unfold in a matter of moments. 'The warnings are called flash-flood warnings for that reason. They happen in moments almost as quickly as tornadoes,' said Cary Burgess, a meteorologist who lives in the area. 'You can't predict where a tornado will strike down, and you cannot predict exactly where heaviest rainfall totals will fall.' He urged that when watches are first issued, 'people have a responsibility to prepare for the worst-case scenario and there was talk about flooding potential for a few days out.' Meteorologists in this region of Texas are acutely aware of the most flood-prone areas in a region that has been known as 'flash flood alley' for decades, said Steven Lyons, who retired four years ago after a decade as the meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service's San Angelo office. When preparing to issue flash-flood warnings in the midst of the storm, lists of dozens of areas in jeopardy would pop up automatically. It's up to the meteorologists to decide which to send, or deselect. Central Texas, specifically Kerr County and the surrounding areas, is made of undulating hills and steep canyons filled with thin, drought-stricken soil and slick limestone. Normally, the rivers and streams run clear, tranquil, and shallow. But when it rains, that topography 'causes the river to roar,' the Upper Guadalupe River Authority explained in a 2017 video warning people of flood risks. The silky, shallow limestone river beds turn the meandering water into massive walls of concrete that hurl water downstream in a matter of minutes. While much of the region is rural and remote, there is a heavy concentration of old mobile-home parks - many filled with vulnerable residents - along and near the river. Kerrville has been growing steadily, according to an overview of city and county meeting minutes, and new residents may not have the lived experience of how quickly heavy rains can spark a flash flood. Ahead of these floods, the Weather Service office near San Antonio, which oversees warnings issued in Kerr County, had one key vacancy: A warning coordination meteorologist, who is responsible for working with emergency managers and the public to ensure people know what to do when a disaster strikes. The person who served in that role for decades was among hundreds of Weather Service employees who accepted early retirement offers and left the agency at the end of April, local media reported. Lyons said that departure would have had a limited impact on Friday's emergency, however, because this staffer's key work takes place weeks and months ahead of a disaster, ensuring training and communication channels are in place. Pat Vesper, meteorologist-in-charge of the Weather Service's San Antonio/Austin office, declined to answer questions about the vacancy, flood warnings or communications with Kerr County officials. He referred questions to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials, who did not immediately respond to questions. The tragedy in Hill Country was already reigniting debate among meteorologists and social scientists, which goes back decades, about how to craft and disseminate warnings in a way that saves lives. 'The real trick is, how do you get people to get the message quickly, a message they can understand easily, and have them take action that will save their lives?' Lyons said. 'People think, 'It can't be that bad; I'll just jump up on my roof,'' Lyons said. 'Well, not if your house is floating away.' The fact that the worst of the flooding hit in the middle of the night only exacerbated the challenge. 'If people had gotten the message before they had gone to sleep, would they have gotten out of there? Maybe,' Lyons said. 'The messaging is critical but so are the actions that people take based on the messaging. We can't tell you how many raindrops are going to fall out of a thunderstorm.' Past floods have spurred the same discussions about how to protect people around Hill Country. About a decade ago, Kerrville leaders began working on a flood warning system, after a river rose to about 45 feet and nearly swallowed the nearby Texas town of Wimberley over Memorial Day Weekend in 2015, said Tom Moser, a Kerr County commissioner at the time. County officials assessed an upgrade to a warning system that would have included sirens. But some balked at the cost, with one commissioner calling it 'a little extravagant for Kerr County, with sirens and such.' The next year, they submitted a grant request for $980,000 to FEMA for the initiatives, county documents show. But they didn't get the money, and 'most of the funds went to communities impacted by Hurricane Harvey,' according to the county's Hazard Mitigation Action Plan. In an interview, Moser said the community took some steps to reduce flood dangers, installing flood gauges and barriers at low river crossings, spots where rural roads pass through what is normally a trickling stream. They also trained emergency management staff and other authorities on what to do in the event of a flood. But despite attempts to fund a larger flood warning system project in the county budget, Moser said, 'It never got across the goal line.' The efforts stalled by the time he retired in 2021. But the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which partners with the county, made some progress this past year. They signed an agreement with a consulting firm to assess the county's needs, aiming to develop a monitoring and warning system depending on 'what we can afford,' said director Diane L. McMahon. The investment comes as the deaths in Texas are likely to galvanize a push for similar flood warning systems across the states and the country, Moser said. 'I think there will be a lot of attention paid to it now,' Moser said, adding that he doesn't know if any warning system will be able to protect everyone. But 'it could be a lot better than what we currently have.' Watching the death toll rise, Nicole Wilson wondered what might have happened if campers along the river had the kind of warnings she had growing up in tornado-prone Kentucky: loud, blaring sirens. After rushing to pick up her two daughters from another Central Texas camp, Wilson thought how just minutes could be life changing. She started a petition on Saturday, calling on officials to 'implement a modern outdoor early warning siren system.' 'Sometimes we only had five minutes,' she recalled of her childhood tornado warnings. 'Maybe those girls in the lower cabins would have come outside and seen the water,' she said. 'Maybe they could have grabbed others and ran to higher ground.'
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Report on false alerts sent during L.A. fires calls for more regulation, scrutiny
After conducting an investigation into Los Angeles County's faulty emergency alerts during the deadly January wildfires, U.S. Congressman Robert Garcia issued a report Monday calling for more federal oversight of the nation's patchwork, privatized emergency alert system. The investigation was launched by Garcia and more than a dozen members of L.A.'s congressional delegation in February after L.A. County sent a series of faulty evacuation alerts on Jan. 9, urging people across a metropolitan region of 10 million to prepare to evacuate. The faulty alerts came two days after intense firestorms erupted in Pacific Palisades and Altadena. The alerts, which were intended for a small group of residents near Calabasas, stoked panic and confusion as they were blasted out repeatedly to communities as far as 40 miles away from the evacuation area. Read more: Investigation launched into L.A. County's faulty emergency alert system The new report, 'Sounding the Alarm: Lessons From the Kenneth Fire False Alerts,' alleged that a technical flaw by Genasys, the software company contracted with the county to issue wireless emergency alerts, caused the faulty alert to ping across the sprawling metro region. It also found that, contrary to accounts of L.A. County officials at the time, multiple echo alerts then went out as cellphone providers experienced overload due to the high volume and long duration of the alerts. Confusion was compounded, the report said, by L.A. County's vague wording of the original alert. 'It's clear that there's still so much reform needed, so that we have operating systems that people can rely on and trust in the future,' Garcia told The Times. The Times was reaching out to Genasys and county officials for response to the report. A Long Beach Democrat who sits on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Garcia said the stakes were incredibly high. 'We're talking about loss of life and property, and people's confidence in our emergency notification systems," he said. "People need to be able to trust that if there's a natural disaster, that they're going to get an alert and it's going to have correct information, and we have to provide that level of security and comfort across the country.' To improve emergency warning alert systems, the report urges Congress and the federal government to "act now to close gaps in alerting system performance, certification, and public communication." 'The lessons from the Kenneth Fire should not only inform reforms," the report states, "but serve as a catalyst to modernize the nation's alerting infrastructure before the next disaster strikes." The report makes several recommendations. It calls for more federal funding for planning, equipment, training and system maintenance on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, the national system that provides emergency public alerts through mobile phones using Wireless Emergency Alerts and to radio and television via the Emergency Alert System. It also urges FEMA to fully complete minimum requirements and improve training to IPAWS that Congress mandated in 2019 after the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency sent out a false warning of an incoming missile attack to millions of residents and vacationers. Five years after Congress required 'the standardization, functionality, and interoperability of incident management and warning tools," the report said, FEMA has yet to finish implementing certification programs for users and third-party software providers. The agency plans to pilot a third-party technology certification program this year. Read more: Western Altadena got evacuation order many hours after Eaton fire exploded. 17 people died there The report also presses the Federal Communications Commission to establish performance standards and develop measurable goals and monitoring for WEA performance, and ensure mobile providers include location-aware maps by the December 2026 deadline. But the push for greater oversight is certain to be a challenge at a time when President Trump and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are pushing for FEMA to be dismantled. In the last few days, the Trump administration fired FEMA's acting head, Cameron Hamilton, after he told U.S. lawmakers he does not support eliminating the agency. Noem told U.S. Congress members at a hearing last week that Trump believes the agency has "failed the American people, and that FEMA, as it exists today, should be eliminated in empowering states to respond to disasters with federal government support.' Garcia described the Trump administration's dismantling of FEMA as 'very concerning.' 'We need to have stable FEMA leadership,' Garcia told The Times. 'The recent reshuffling and changes that are happening, I hope, do not get in the way of actually making these systems stronger. We need stability at FEMA. We need FEMA to continue to exist. … The sooner that we get the investments in, the sooner that we complete these studies, I think the more safe people are going to feel.' Garcia said his office was working on drafting legislation that could address some of these issues. 'We really need to push FEMA and we need to push the administration — and Congress absolutely has a role in making sure these systems are stronger,' Garcia said. 'Ensuring that we fully fund these systems is critical. ... There's dozens of these systems, and yet there's no real kind of centralized rules that are modern.' According to FEMA, more than 40 different commercial providers work in the emergency alert market. But further steps need to be taken, an agency official said, to train local emergency managers and regulate the private software companies and wireless providers that play a pivotal role in safeguarding millions of Americans during severe wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and active shooter incidents. "Ongoing efforts are needed to increase training with alerting authorities, enhance standardization with service providers, and further collaboration with wireless providers to improve the delivery of Wireless Emergency Alerts to the public," Thomas Breslin, acting associate administrator of FEMA's Office of National Continuity Programs, said in a letter to Garcia. Genasys, a San Diego-based company, said in a recent SEC filing that its "ALERT coverage has expanded into cities and counties in 39 states." 'The vast majority of California" is covered by its EVAC system, it said, which continues 'to grow into the eastern United States, with covered areas expanding into Texas, South Carolina, and Tennessee.' Read more: After AI bar exam fiasco, State Bar of California faces deeper financial crisis Genasys also noted that its ALERT system is an 'interactive, cloud-based" software service, raising the possibility of communication disruption. 'The information technology systems we and our vendors use are vulnerable to outages, breakdowns or other damage or interruption from service interruptions, system malfunction, natural disasters, terrorism, war, and telecommunication and electrical failures,' it said in its SEC filing. As part of its investigation into how evacuation warnings were accidentally sent to nearly 10 million L.A. County residents during the L.A. fires, Garcia received responses from Genasys, L.A. County, FEMA and the FCC. The report said a L.A. County emergency management worker saved an alert correctly with a narrowly defined polygon in the area near the Kenneth fire. But the software did not upload the correct evacuation area polygon to IPAWS, possibly due to a network disruption, the report said. The Genasys system also did not warn the L.A. County emergency management staffer that drafted the alert a targeted polygon was missing in the IPAWS channel before it sent the message, the report found. Genasys has since added safeguards to its software, but the report noted that Genasys did not provide details about the incident. . It suggested the independent after-action review into the Eaton and Palisades fire response "further investigate Genasys' claims of what caused the error, and how a network disruption would have occurred or could have blocked the proper upload of a polygon into the IPAWS distribution channel.' The report commended L.A. County for responding quickly in canceling the alert within 2 minutes and 47 seconds and issuing a corrected message about 20 minutes later, stating the alert was sent 'in ERROR.' But it also criticized the county's wording of the original alert as vague. Some confusion could have been avoided, it said, if the emergency management staffer who wrote the alert had described the area with more geographic specificity and included timestamps. The report also found that a series of false echo alerts that went out over the next few days were not caused by cellphone towers coming back online after being knocked down because of the fires, as L.A. County emergency management officials reported. Instead, they were caused by cellphone networks' technical issues. One cellphone company attributed the duplicate alerts to a result of 'overload, due to high volume and long duration of alerts sent during fires.' While the report said the company installed a temporary patch and was developing a permanent repair, it is unclear if other networks have enabled safeguards to make sure they do not face similar problems. The report did not delve into the critical delays in electronic emergency alerts sent to areas of Altadena. When flames erupted from Eaton Canyon on Jan. 7, neighborhoods on the east side of Altadena got evacuation orders at 7:26 p.m., but residents to the west did not receive orders until 3:25 a.m. — hours after fires began to destroy their neighborhoods. Seventeen of the 18 people confirmed dead in the Eaton fire were on the west side. Garcia told The Times that the problems in Altadena appeared to be due to human error, rather than technical errors with emergency alert software. Garcia said he and other L.A. Congress members were anxious to read the McChrystal Group's after-action review of the response to the Eaton and Palisades fires. Local, state and federal officials all shared some blame for the problems with alerts in the L.A. fire, Garcia said. Going forward, Congress should press the federal government, he said, to develop a reliable regulatory system for alerts. 'When you have so many operators and you don't have these IPAWS requirements in place, that is concerning," Garcia said. "We should have a standard that's federal, that's clear.' Garcia told The Times that emergency alerts were not just a Southern California issue. "These systems are used around the country,' he said. 'This can impact any community, and so it's in everyone's best interests to move forward and to work with FEMA, to work with the FCC, to make sure that we make these adjustments and changes. I think it's very critical." Times staff writer Paige St. John contributed to this report. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Report on false alerts sent during L.A. fires calls for more regulation, scrutiny
After conducting an investigation into Los Angeles County's faulty emergency alerts during the deadly January wildfires, U.S. Congressman Robert Garcia issued a report Monday calling for more federal oversight of the nation's patchwork, privatized emergency alert system. The investigation was launched by Garcia and more than a dozen members of L.A.'s congressional delegation in February after L.A. County sent a series of faulty evacuation alerts on Jan. 9, urging people across a metropolitan region of 10 million to prepare to evacuate. The faulty alerts came two days after intense firestorms erupted in Pacific Palisades and Altadena. The alerts, which were intended for a small group of residents near Calabasas, stoked panic and confusion as they were blasted out repeatedly to communities as far as 40 miles away from the evacuation area. The new report, 'Sounding the Alarm: Lessons From the Kenneth Fire False Alerts,' alleged that a technical flaw by Genasys, the software company contracted with the county to issue wireless emergency alerts, caused the faulty alert to ping across the sprawling metro region. It also found that, contrary to accounts of L.A. County officials at the time, multiple echo alerts then went out as cellphone providers experienced overload due to the high volume and long duration of the alerts. Confusion was compounded, the report said, by L.A. County's vague wording of the original alert. 'It's clear that there's still so much reform needed, so that we have operating systems that people can rely on and trust in the future,' Garcia told The Times. The Times was reaching out to Genasys and county officials for response to the report. A Long Beach Democrat who sits on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Garcia said the stakes were incredibly high. 'We're talking about loss of life and property, and people's confidence in our emergency notification systems,' he said. 'People need to be able to trust that if there's a natural disaster, that they're going to get an alert and it's going to have correct information, and we have to provide that level of security and comfort across the country.' To improve emergency warning alert systems, the report urges Congress and the federal government to 'act now to close gaps in alerting system performance, certification, and public communication.' 'The lessons from the Kenneth Fire should not only inform reforms,' the report states, 'but serve as a catalyst to modernize the nation's alerting infrastructure before the next disaster strikes.' The report makes several recommendations. It calls for more federal funding for planning, equipment, training and system maintenance on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, the national system that provides emergency public alerts through mobile phones using Wireless Emergency Alerts and to radio and television via the Emergency Alert System. It also urges FEMA to fully complete minimum requirements and improve training to IPAWS that Congress mandated in 2019 after the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency sent out a false warning of an incoming missile attack to millions of residents and vacationers. Five years after Congress required 'the standardization, functionality, and interoperability of incident management and warning tools,' the report said, FEMA has yet to finish implementing certification programs for users and third-party software providers. The agency plans to pilot a third-party technology certification program this year. The report also presses the Federal Communications Commission to establish performance standards and develop measurable goals and monitoring for WEA performance, and ensure mobile providers include location-aware maps by the December 2026 deadline. But the push for greater oversight is certain to be a challenge at a time when President Trump and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are pushing for FEMA to be dismantled. In the last few days, the Trump administration fired FEMA's acting head, Cameron Hamilton, after he told U.S. lawmakers he does not support eliminating the agency. Noem told U.S. Congress members at a hearing last week that Trump believes the agency has 'failed the American people, and that FEMA, as it exists today, should be eliminated in empowering states to respond to disasters with federal government support.' Garcia described the Trump administration's dismantling of FEMA as 'very concerning.' 'We need to have stable FEMA leadership,' Garcia told The Times. 'The recent reshuffling and changes that are happening, I hope, do not get in the way of actually making these systems stronger. We need stability at FEMA. We need FEMA to continue to exist. … The sooner that we get the investments in, the sooner that we complete these studies, I think the more safe people are going to feel.' Garcia said his office was working on drafting legislation that could address some of these issues. 'We really need to push FEMA and we need to push the administration — and Congress absolutely has a role in making sure these systems are stronger,' Garcia said. 'Ensuring that we fully fund these systems is critical. ... There's dozens of these systems, and yet there's no real kind of centralized rules that are modern.' According to FEMA, more than 40 different commercial providers work in the emergency alert market. But further steps need to be taken, an agency official said, to train local emergency managers and regulate the private software companies and wireless providers that play a pivotal role in safeguarding millions of Americans during severe wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and active shooter incidents. 'Ongoing efforts are needed to increase training with alerting authorities, enhance standardization with service providers, and further collaboration with wireless providers to improve the delivery of Wireless Emergency Alerts to the public,' Thomas Breslin, acting associate administrator of FEMA's Office of National Continuity Programs, said in a letter to Garcia. Genasys, a San Diego-based company, said in a recent SEC filing that its 'ALERT coverage has expanded into cities and counties in 39 states.' 'The vast majority of California' is covered by its EVAC system, it said, which continues 'to grow into the eastern United States, with covered areas expanding into Texas, South Carolina, and Tennessee.' Genasys also noted that its ALERT system is an 'interactive, cloud-based' software service, raising the possibility of communication disruption. 'The information technology systems we and our vendors use are vulnerable to outages, breakdowns or other damage or interruption from service interruptions, system malfunction, natural disasters, terrorism, war, and telecommunication and electrical failures,' it said in its SEC filing. As part of its investigation into how evacuation warnings were accidentally sent to nearly 10 million L.A. County residents during the L.A. fires, Garcia received responses from Genasys, L.A. County, FEMA and the FCC. The report said a L.A. County emergency management worker saved an alert correctly with a narrowly defined polygon in the area near the Kenneth fire. But the software did not upload the correct evacuation area polygon to IPAWS, possibly due to a network disruption, the report said. The Genasys system also did not warn the L.A. County emergency management staffer that drafted the alert a targeted polygon was missing in the IPAWS channel before it sent the message, the report found. Genasys has since added safeguards to its software, but the report noted that Genasys did not provide details about the incident. . It suggested the independent after-action review into the Eaton and Palisades fire response 'further investigate Genasys' claims of what caused the error, and how a network disruption would have occurred or could have blocked the proper upload of a polygon into the IPAWS distribution channel.' The report commended L.A. County for responding quickly in canceling the alert within 2 minutes and 47 seconds and issuing a corrected message about 20 minutes later, stating the alert was sent 'in ERROR.' But it also criticized the county's wording of the original alert as vague. Some confusion could have been avoided, it said, if the emergency management staffer who wrote the alert had described the area with more geographic specificity and included timestamps. The report also found that a series of false echo alerts that went out over the next few days were not caused by cellphone towers coming back online after being knocked down because of the fires, as L.A. County emergency management officials reported. Instead, they were caused by cellphone networks' technical issues. One cellphone company attributed the duplicate alerts to a result of 'overload, due to high volume and long duration of alerts sent during fires.' While the report said the company installed a temporary patch and was developing a permanent repair, it is unclear if other networks have enabled safeguards to make sure they do not face similar problems. The report did not delve into the critical delays in electronic emergency alerts sent to areas of Altadena. When flames erupted from Eaton Canyon on Jan. 7, neighborhoods on the east side of Altadena got evacuation orders at 7:26 p.m., but residents to the west did not receive orders until 3:25 a.m. — hours after fires began to destroy their neighborhoods. Seventeen of the 18 people confirmed dead in the Eaton fire were on the west side. Garcia told The Times that the problems in Altadena appeared to be due to human error, rather than technical errors with emergency alert software. Garcia said he and other L.A. Congress members were anxious to read the McChrystal Group's after-action review of the response to the Eaton and Palisades fires. Local, state and federal officials all shared some blame for the problems with alerts in the L.A. fire, Garcia said. Going forward, Congress should press the federal government, he said, to develop a reliable regulatory system for alerts. 'When you have so many operators and you don't have these IPAWS requirements in place, that is concerning,' Garcia said. 'We should have a standard that's federal, that's clear.' Garcia told The Times that emergency alerts were not just a Southern California issue. 'These systems are used around the country,' he said. 'This can impact any community, and so it's in everyone's best interests to move forward and to work with FEMA, to work with the FCC, to make sure that we make these adjustments and changes. I think it's very critical.' Times staff writer Paige St. John contributed to this report.
CBS News
31-03-2025
- General
- CBS News
Alert about Detroit explosion accidentally sent to multiple, unaffected communities in early morning hours
As the investigation continues into what caused the explosion at a Detroit apartment complex on Monday , many people outside of Detroit are wondering why they received an emergency alert about the incident during the early morning hours. For some people, the notification about a possible explosion on Littlefield Street in Detroit caused a rude awakening. "I was very upset because I didn't fall asleep till 4 a.m. So then I was up at 6 a.m., and I've been up almost all night long," said Karen Srigley, of Gross Pointe. A fire department spokesperson issued a statement, saying that someone meant to use Detroit Alerts 365 to send the alert "to the zip code surrounding the incident" but instead sent it through FEMA's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System (IPAWS). "It wasn't in my area. I immediately started to think about my mom, my dad, my brother and other family members, and wanting to make sure they weren't anywhere near the incident," Alosha Jackson, of Detroit, said. Detroit Alerts 365 launched in 2021. It allows the city to send targeted alerts via text, email, or phone to residents who have opted into the system. The alert sends Detroit-specific notifications about emergency situations, such as severe weather, public safety concerns, evacuation orders, notices to shelter in place and boil water advisories. Messages sent to mobile devices through IPAWS use cell towers to reach as many people as possible. "I was curious about why it went off. I mean, because I guess I was thinking that something when, when your alarm goes off like that, it's something that you know that you need to do, you need to take cover, or you need to check into something," Kathleen Samul, of Detroit, said. To that end, some said they were unbothered by the disruption overall. "In my opinion, although this may not have affected you, you know, or certain people in their immediate location, I think you do have to think about how that alarm was meant to help bring awareness to the situation," Jackson said. "It was a little jarring, but it didn't cause too much of the upset for me because it was just before I was about to wake up." DFD has taken responsibility for the confusion and apologizes for any inconvenience the alert caused the community.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Ohio tornado drill set for Wednesday
(WKBN) — Ohio's annual statewide tornado drill is happening Wednesday. The annual test takes place each year during Severe Weather Awareness Week. If you hear a siren at 9:50 Wednesday morning or receive a test alert on your phone, don't be alarmed — it's all for Ohio's Statewide Tornado Drill. The sirens have historically been a way to notify people of a tornado warning. But as technology has changed, so has the way people are notified of weather events. Trumbull County Emergency Management Agency uses the WENS Notification System, where people can voluntarily sign up to receive alerts. It's also certified through the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, meaning anyone traveling through the county during a tornado warning will get a push alert on their phone. 'We do have a lot of traffic on 80, on the turnpike, on 11, so people coming through our county a lot,' said John Hickey, Trumbull County EMA director. 'I think it's important that they kind of know what's going on.' Emergency officials say it's important to use Wednesday's statewide drill as an opportunity to practice a safety plan.' 'Make sure they know what to do if we did have a real situation,' Hickey said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
