Then there is the judgment and mechanical issue of issuing warnings here in the United States. California is called out for repeated failures concerning wildfires, in this article, California’s emergency alert system has been a disaster. A statewide fix is planned.
There are multiple issues at play concerning the warning issue. Unfortunately, most of them center around the emergency manager or other persons with the responsibility for issuing warnings.
- Reluctance to issue a warning
- Fear of making a mistake
- Unfamiliarity with the warning system(s) available to them
- Lack of procedures and authorities to issue warnings
- Ineptitude on the part of people
- Communication systems failures
- Overloaded systems
- Reliance on single warning systems
California, which has suffered multiple failures, has developed an Alert and Warning Guidelines publication for local emergency managers (I still need to review this — but anything is better than nothing.) There are no FEMA courses on warnings.
If you want to get fired, the first place to start is to screw up a warning. You should have this part of your job down cold, so you can do it in your sleep!