Yet another serious telecommunications breakdown amid dangerous #wildfire outbreak in Northwest Territories of Canada this evening. Multiple large communities are evacuating with little means of receiving information...a theme playing out over and over and over again. #NWTfires https://t.co/hthtepRvvO
@weatherwest @ai6yr in light of telecoms going down during fires, curious if either of you know about NOAA weather radios alerting about evacuations? Mainly thinking about the paradise fire, but I’m sure there are other examples. Fire hit early enough that some people were probably asleep until it was too late to get out. Do alerts go out that would trigger a NOAA weather radio to sound the alarm to wake people up? Any specific examples of this happening?
@weatherwest @ai6yr also curious, who would push these alerts out for fires if they are even a thing? The local NWS office? Not sure they would have the most timely information. Can local law enforcement push the alerts themselves? Kinda doubt it. Would they call the NWS office to do it? That seems like it would be a bureaucratic mess.
@weatherwest @ai6yr so I think I partially answered my own question. Seems that local law enforcement can send out alerts to weather radios and other systems using a FEMA system called IPAWS. Found this report from NOAA regarding the camp fire. Emphasis on “can” though because paradise PD is quoted as saying they didn’t use IPAWS because it “creates too big of a notification footprint”. https://www.weather.gov/media/publications/assessments/sa1162SignedReport.pdf
@Mindfields @weatherwest @ai6yr incidentally, this 'alerting over too wide an area' is also a problem in Alaska for Tsunami alerts.
https://www.governing.com/infrastructure/alaskas-tsunami-warning-system-causes-confusion-evacuations
