Toledo water warning system aug 4 2014

From the Aug 3, 2014 Keith Burris column

6) Can’t we put a better system in place for notifying the public of a crisis of this proportion than posting it on Facebook in the dead of night? I have to believe that, in this age of technology, we can.

Good question.

Our civil defense sirens can be used for more than a tornado warning, but those things are meant to be heard by people who are outside.

I think that if the sheriffs of the affected counties desired, they could have sounded the sirens. People would have assumed the sirens were storm-related, but it would have caused them to check media sources.

I don't know if the NOAA weather radio alarm system could be activated for an event like this.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/nwrwarn.htm

A digital burst of information is broadcast. This digital burst, called Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME), contains information on the type of message, the area affected (usually by county), and the expiration time of the message. The Maximum message expiration time allowed is 6 hours after the alert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_Weather_Radio

It also broadcasts alerts of non-weather emergencies such as national security, natural, environmental and public safety.

This alert is also broadcast over AM and FM radio stations, but you need to be listening to the radio at the time.

A weather radio can be set to alert mode, so that it appears to be turned off, but the loud alarm gets sounded when the regional office sends out the alert.

Even if the weather radio alarm could be used, I'm guessing that only a small percentage of residents have such a radio or have them turned on in alert mode.

Maybe the alarm was sounded early Saturday morning. Did anyone's weather radio alarm sound? Normally, I have mine set to alert mode, but on Friday night, it was unplugged because I moved it while cleaning. The alarm is loud enough to wake me. It's disturbingly loud, which is good.

Three regional National Weather Service offices cover the Toledo area.

• Cleveland: Lucas and Wood counties
• Detroit/Pontiac: Monroe County
• Northern Indiana: Fulton County

Based upon the areas impacted this weekend by the water ban, all three offices would have had to alert the impacted counties within their coverage area.

It should work similar to the Storm Prediction Center issuing a watch box that impacts counties covered by all three regional weather offices, except that someone at a water facility has to alert the weather bureaus.

At one time, I thought that landline phones could be sounded for some kind of warning. But not everyone has a landline phone today.

The Emergency Alert System is a national setup.

Someone suggested an Amber Alert-like system that could trigger a fairly loud alarm on a cell phone.