COVID-19 Public Safety Alerts and #STFH

My iPhone was placed on my desk about 1 foot away from me when I was startled by a piercing alarm accompanied an emergency alert:

I received this message because I enabled notifications on my iPhone. There are actually 3 kinds of government alerts that you can elect to receive: AMBER alerts, emergency alerts, and public safety alerts. I guess the above alert falls into 2 of the 3 categories. More information about these alerts can be found on the Apple support page.

About 2 minutes later, I received a text message and email with the same message:

The text message and email were generated by NotifyLA, a service of the City of Los Angeles Emergency Management Department. I have received numerous text messages and emails from NotifyLA about wildfires and COVID-19. If you live in a major metropolitan area, chances are that there will be similar services available to you.

On the plus side, I think it’s terrific that we have so many ways of rapidly disseminating information to a large number of people. On the other hand, I continue to see social media posts that many people are not adhering to social distancing measures, and I have witnessed this first hand while running “essential” errands (e.g., getting food) around Los Angeles. So overall, it’s too bad that we have to use this technology. Let’s get it together folks and stay the f*ck home.

Google Crisis Map

With the recent wildfires in Los Angeles and the current fires in Australia, I’ve been tracking developments on Google Crisis Map.

On top of the usual Google Maps technology, there are additional layers of information that users can display. Categories include:

• Public Alerts (emergency information including evacuation notices for hurricanes, storm warnings, earthquakes, etc.)
• Tropical Storm Information (hurricanes and storms, including current location and forecast path)
• Evacuation Resources
• Traffic & Transit
• Floods
• Wildfires

While it is currently mostly focused on US-based weather and events, there is coverage of the ongoing Australian wildfires.

I wonder what the Google Crisis Map would have shown in San Bernardino County on December 26, 2019 when we got stuck on the road due to highway closures from snowstorms.

In any case, I hope you’ll never need to rely on this resource, but in the event that it may become useful in the future, now you know.

Presidential and Non-presidential Text Alerts

Yesterday I was in the San Antonio International Airport when suddenly I heard the sound of a loud alert resonate throughout the airport. I didn't realize it at the time, but my phone was producing the sound in concert with hundreds of other phones. This was the reason why:



According to an announcement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a nationwide test of the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) and Emergency Alert System was scheduled for yesterday afternoon. The announcement says, "The WEA system is used to warn the public about dangerous weather, missing children, and other critical situations through alerts on cell phones."

I wonder why this was called a "Presidential Alert" and am guessing that it has to do with our president compensating for his feelings of inadequacy related to relief efforts in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. It would have been more appropriate to call it a "National Alert" or something similar.

Anyway, did you know that in addition to these national alerting systems, there are local emergency alerting programs too? If you live in Los Angeles, here are a couple that might be of interest:

Alert LA County: https://www.lacounty.gov/emergency/alert-la/
NotifyLA: http://emergency.lacity.org/notifyla

There are local alerting programs in other metropolitan areas too. Try searching Google for "text alert [city]" to learn more. Stay safe and be alert! After all, the world needs more lerts (rimshot).

Fire Danger - iOS Emergency Alert

At 8:25 PM Pacific time today (12/6/2017), I received the following emergency alert on my iPhone 6 Plus running iOS 11.2:



This was not unexpected, as wildfires have been burning for a couple of days across Southern California. More information here and in the map below:

We are not currently in immediate danger, and I hope not to receive any more emergency alerts. Related story here.