[sbe-eas] NWS forgetting the lessons of Hurricane Harvey (Houston 2017)

[Ed Czarnecki]

You are arguing a different point.

As Rob Dale clarified, there were up to 45 tornadoes during this window.  Plus the hurricane itself, of course.  This was an utter mess, and if warning systems became "hyperactive", I am merely stating that this over-alerting is understandable in this case.

This is not to be construed with the overall challenge of over-alerting during TOR, TSW and other events.  We (or at least I) am discussing a singular extreme or hard case.

And as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, hard cases make for bad law.   This incident will make for a hard case that can potentially provide some lessons learned.  But it is still too early.  Especially on the over-alerting question where the ratio of alerts to events might be closer to the 3:1 range, rather than my initial guesstimate of 10:1.

-----Original Message-----
From: sbe-eas <sbe-eas-bounces at sbe.org> On Behalf Of Sean Donelan
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2024 12:54 PM
To: SBE EAS Exchange - a mail list for discussion about the Emergency Alert System and other emergency communication issues. <sbe-eas at sbe.org>
Subject: Re: [sbe-eas] NWS forgetting the lessons of Hurricane Harvey (Houston 2017)


If dinging people 10 times is good, why not ding them 20 times or 50 times.

Surely, more is better.  Its not like those people won't turn off their alerts, and not receive a later alert about a more severe, more relevant event.

For a few decades, building fire alarm vendors kept increasing the decibel sound levels of fire alarms on the theory making it louder would get people to leave faster.

Louder doesn't work.  Instead firefighters demanded a way to silence fire alarms while they were trying to put out fires. The loud fire alarms made it difficult for first responders to hear people needing rescue.

On Thu, 10 Oct 2024, Ed Czarnecki wrote:
> that, dinging people 10 or times over WEA that there is a tornado … on 
> the ground … may well have gotten some of the more stubborn folk to 
> actually take action, and prevent further casualties (as a relative of 
> some rather stubborn folk in FL).