Questions are being raised as to the lack of a cell phone alert in the early hours of the Camp Fire. Coming only a year after the wildfire that killed 24 people in Sonoma County who were unable to evacuate, Butte County officials choose to use on-foot evacuation crews and sending messages through the opt-in only Code Red system, as reported by The San Francisco Chronicle. No Wireless Emergency Alert, an Amber Alert type message sent to all cell phones within a specified area, was issued — despite a doubling of WEAs in 2018, and promotion in statewide legislation.“What would have been nice to see in the Camp Fire (was a) WEA alert to let everyone know about the fire and to prepare accordingly,” director of the Center for Natural & Technological Hazards at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City Thomas Cova told The Chronicle. “Even though it would have been followed shortly by an urgent evacuation notice, people — especially the less mobile — would have been given a fighting chance to ready themselves to go if they hadn’t left already.”
Difficulties in deciding the correct alert system has been discussed in articles such as one on Axios, titled “Why it’s so hard to issue a fire warning”. The National Weather Service, for example, can disseminate fire warnings if requested by other agencies.
“We know we used CodeRed messages. We used law enforcement officers in the area. No single notification system is 100 percent effective,” Butte County spokeswoman Megan McMann told The Chronicle. “That is made more difficult with how rapid this fire was moving. When this emergency is over, we will be able to put our attention toward this.”
Sources:
https://www.axios.com/california-camp-fire-why-no-warning-cb62b3a0-4820-4289-8be0-4ac9cebe2519.html
