911 with Addison requesting
chaos. Rarely comes with a lot of information
overseas. An Amber Alert about
5 evacuation in my area.
But this chaos, and I'm so sorry,
I got an evacuation notice and passed.
It was the result
of too much information.
OK, that was actually
out of Colorado Springs.
The danger that day back in May of
last year, so working
Grassfire Rogers threats,
was about 30 miles South of Castle Rock.
We are far behind you 1000,
running sparks in an open space behind
a huge neighborhood dispatch confirming
you were able to start it back
to warn people that day,
Colorado Springs used a WEA,
or wireless emergency alert.
It's the same kind of alert
you get in an Amber Alert,
a message sent to every cell
phone in a specific area,
drawn on a map by emergency managers.
I'm gonna go in this area here.
Ben Bills is in charge of El Paso County's
access to the federal WEA system.
It's an evacuation order for a fire
at summer grace and Ackerman Way.
And then it said evacuate
the area immediately.
To send that wiah.
Emergency workers drew a
shape on the map where they
wanted this message to go.
A pretty small shape covering
about six blocks.
Pretty quickly, bills realized
something was wrong. Phones
rang off the hook here,
and they were ringing off the hook here.
Fire stations, dispatch centers.
Of people just calling and wanting
information to know this alert
that I just got. What is it?
And it says I need to leave now.
People who were calling were far outside
that small shape drawn on the map.
Bills check the map again.
That went out county wide though.
No, no, that's going to be
300,000 plus notifications
countrywide and beyond.
This alert reached people
55 miles north in conifer,
all the way down South to Pueblo.
How you might ask? Two reasons.
First, the shape they drew.
That day had too many lines,
which made the system lose
its mind and target that
alert to the entire county.
The wireless Emergency alert system
wants a very simple defined shape.
Squares, rectangle,
even a circle can sometimes work,
but we had two two intricate of
a shape outlining those specific
streets in a residential neighborhood.
Second, since it was broadcast from
all cell towers inside El Paso County,
older phones outside of El
Paso County got the message.
It's significant. We're making
use of imperfect technologies.
Chris Godley is an emergency manager
in Sonoma County, California.
His office uses weigh more than
most communities across the country.
It's a big concern because if I'm trying
to get 1000 people out of very small
rural area and there's only one road
and but I alert 200,000 people, yes,
that could impair their ability to leave.
When AWEA goes out,
cell towers transmit that message to
every phone connected to that tower.
Your phone then uses geolocation.
Sort out if it's in the area that's
supposed to get the message.
The newest technology enables
phones to be pretty darn accurate,
down to hundreds of feet.
Problem is, estimates are about
40% of cell phones in use
don't have this new technology,
meaning they'll get the message far
outside the targeted zone, Godley says.
There doesn't seem to be a lot
of motivation to improve that.
It's not exciting subject.
It's technology and who cares?
And there's no money tied to it,
so no one's going to invest.
Lot of energy into it.
It takes failure to drive change.
Right now, cell phone companies aren't
even required to participate in WIAA,
because now lives clearly depend
on our ability to issue warnings.
We would like to see the federal
government help us develop a minimum
performance standard for technologies,
both telecommunications and
for the device manufacturers.
Back in Colorado Springs,
bills and his team have learned to
adapt to use this imperfect system,
learning from mistakes.
We just sent out a training.
And it says use a simple shape,
square rectangle circle to mitigate
that problem in the future.
But he believes a message that goes
too far is better than no message at
all. As the System Administrator,
I would stand here and tell anybody that
I would rather have the conversation
that we notified you have an emergency.
It might have caused some concern
or inconvenience to you to read
something that didn't pertain to you
rather than have that discussion
that someone was hurt or worse
because they weren't notified. Last
summer, 5 Front Range counties told
FCC Commissioners they would like to
see improvements in we are like an
elimination of that 100 point limit
for zones and some sort of pressure on
phone companies to upgrade users phones
to include this newer WIA software.
In the meantime, they're trying
to do what Bill said,
figure out ways to sidestep
around the infrastructure issues
and send better messages.
One of the things he wants to get
the message out is when you get one
of these messages in the public,
read the whole thing.
He said cause often people will
see the first line and it says
evacuate immediately and they
don't know what area it's in even
though it's in the message.
So you said the key is to that they
don't want to clog up these 911 centers.
Sure, during disasters. So fix that problem.
I mean when you hear that emergency
manager from California say, well,
there's not really any money in it,
so there's not a lot of urgency
from the carriers to to fix it,
that makes a lot of sense.
But then that kind of is like
why government exists to come
in and be like, hey guys,
yeah, the government used to do that.
Back in the day of Copper line, you know,
landline telephones like Ma Bell,
they made them follow certain rules
and have certain things in place.
They don't quite have that for WEA.
It's a voluntary
program entirely. And he says, you know,
it takes failure to cause change.
I mean, yeah, but the consequences
of failure here could be deadly.
You don't wanna fail. And he says
he's worried that it might take that
to get the federal government
moving. Wow. Alright.
Thank you, Steve.