5 days ago
How ‘alert fatigue' impacts communities during natural disasters
Destructive flash flooding in central Texas, specifically Kerr County, has led to at least 121 fatalities and over 170 people missing after the Guadalupe River overflowed.
Many affected individuals did not receive emergency warnings due to a lack of mobile phone service, silenced notifications, or not having their devices present.
The tragedy underscores the problem of alert fatigue, where an abundance of warnings causes people to disable notifications, increasing their vulnerability during emergencies.
Challenges in the emergency alert system include the difficulty of predicting flash floods, overly broad warnings, and rural authorities lacking funding or expertise to issue effective alerts.
While the FCC is developing improvements like muted alerts for less severe situations, these changes are not anticipated until 2028, highlighting ongoing deficiencies in public warning systems.
