BOLO sent 4/21/23 WHEN YOU WANT TO GET ATTENTION, SOMETIMES IT'S A GOOD IDEA TO SCREAM. Sometimes, getting ATTENTION can be as simple as varying the TEXT so that sometimes the TEXT is in ALL CAPS and sometimes it is not. Do you see what I did there? Your eye went to the text that was in ALL CAPS because it was different from the other text. This same effect can be created using bold font or italicized font or a combination of the three bold/italicized, bold/ALL CAPS, itali

WEA issued on 4/20/23 for a brush fire Decades ago, disaster researchers Mike Lindell and Ron Perry developed the Protective Action Decision Model, which informs our understanding of the pre-decisional and decisional factors that affect protective action taking. In this, they identify environmental cues (such as smoke that can be smelled or seen) as well as social cues (such as a warning message from an official or unofficial source). These are important factors for alerting

WEAs issued 3/22/23 These messages are complete and include stylistic choices to increase attention (use of ALL CAPS for GO and EVACUATE) and offer more information (inclusion of a URL). In a world of poorly written WEAs, these are easy to read, understandable, and actionable. How can they be improved? We've noted before about the various language used to trigger evacuation for wildfires (to read about this, go to this recently published article by Kuligowski, Waugh, Sut

WEA sent 3/22/2023 Alert originators are required by IPAWS to conduct regular tests of their system to ensure that it is operational and that operators can use it effectively. Occasionally, system tests can be conducted in tandem with other activities, such as siren testing and a drill, as demonstrated in this message. There's a lot going on here and it's a great opportunity to investigate whether redundancy (siren plus WEA) affected behavior change (participating in a dril

Alerts sent on 3/10/23 to West Hollywood, followed by all of L.A. County The Warn Room resources and commentary have been primarily focused on imminent threat alerting; we draw from theory and empirical research to guide the review, analysis, and comments about warnings shared via WEA. But as a WEA observer (see warn.pbs.org), it is clear that most WEAs are issued for two kinds of events: weather (sent by NWS WFOs) and missing persons (sometimes sent by the NCMEC and sometim

WEA sent 2/24/2023 Some alerts and warnings warrant a great amount of detail to help message receivers understand the threat and what they should do to protect themselves. This alert is not one of them. When an event such as a 911 outage has the potential to affect emergency services, a WEA can be the difference between life and death. That is not the case here. While it would be tempting to point out that there was no threat precipitating this particular WEA, the more ch

New Palestine, Ohio Train Derailment. February 3-6, 2023 The messages sent to alert the Village of New Palestine, OH were absolutely vital to their safety. Given the potential for devastation, should the rail cars have actually exploded on Feb 6, 2023, helping families evacuate and get to a safe place was a top priority. Several WEA messages had gone out, but they were incomplete and lacked clear instruction about the hazard, the severity, and the protective actions necess

WEA sent 1/31/2022 Cancellation messages, also called "all-clear" or "post-alert messages," have been under-studied by warning researchers. While several investigations followed the ICBM WEA issued to Hawaii in 2018 to learn the heartbreak and terror that many experienced (DeYoung et al. 2019), few studies have determined what should be said in the aftermath. Earthquake researchers are leading this effort now as they prepare for the likely false alert due to potential tech

We've seen a lot of WEAs that are missing content in the message that is delivered to the phone... but sometimes, when we take a look at the field marked "description" (see warn.pbs.org) it seems as though additional content was provided in the software but entered into the wrong text box. This could mean a lack of training on how to use the software - an easy fix with additional attention. Sometimes, there are still problems with the message - such as this example that is f

WEA sent 1/4/2023 Recent research on the use of humor for crisis communication has shown some mixed responses. Generally it has focused on preparedness messaging (such as the zombie apocalypse campaign run by the CDC) or long term recovery (such as the fan club for Rusty the Lava Rooster who gained a following in 2018 during a volcanic eruption in HI). This message sent from a Sheriff's Office in SD says, tongue in cheek, 'If you must travel, don't' and follows with an expl

WEA sent 1/4/23 by Santa Barbara County EM Communicating with limited-English speaking populations MUST be a priority for risk communicators. As demographics across the U.S. continue to change, there will be an increasing need for communicating in languages other than English. WEAs can be sent in English and Spanish, but message senders must have the tools to translate and write competently in both languages. This is a challenge that many communities across the U.S. are tr

WEA sent 1/4/2023 In 2019 the FCC approved WEA 2.0, allowing alert originators to add a URL to their WEA message text. The reasoning behind this is simple: 90-character messages increase milling (searching for information before taking action), so if you give people a url, they'll go to the source rather than search. Since then there has been plenty of discussion about how to include a URL (.gov to increase trust, bit.ly to reduce the number of characters, Facebook to incre

WEA sent 12/17/2022 Shelter in place, and its cousin evacuate now, are orders that are frequently included in WEAs as well as the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). Unfortunately, this kind of order without the inclusion of the hazard name is not likely to lead to the kind of immediate behavior that it is intended to prompt. Instead, this kind of directive will lead most people to delay action as they look for information about the hazard and determine if they believe that th

WEA sent 12/15/2022 Wireless Emergency Alerts frequently serve as the channel to reach populations in "the last mile," that is, those who are hard to reach otherwise. Because of this, they are received by everyone within that polygon who has a WEA-enabled device. For this reason, as well as many others, they must be complete and internally consistent to prevent people from delaying action. One way to improve a WEA is by using all 360 characters available. The one here is

WEAs sent 12/9/2022 In November, 2019, the FEMA-IPAWS program rolled out "WEA 2.0" which increased the message character count from 90 to 360 characters after researchers (Comprehensive Testing of Imminent Threat Public Messages for Mobile Devices) demonstrated that shorter messages lead to protective action delay, largely because they are incomplete. By increasing the character count of a WEA, alerting authorities have the ability to add details that will improve message sp

WEA sent 12/3/2022 While not a recommendation backed by empirical research, some WEAs include content about what the responding organization is doing to actively investigate, mitigate, or manage the threat. In this case, the BGPD issued an alert to notify the community of threats that they were actively investigating. Additional information about the threat and the public safety consequences were shared on Facebook, YouTube, and by local media organizations, with the end re

WEA sent 11/26/2022 While researchers and practitioners recommend including an expiration time in the warning message, when an incident will be over or the time by which a threat will be managed cannot always be known. Expiration times are primarily included in weather related WEAs and are updated with new information when conditions change. In the case of an active event requiring a public safety response, including a statement that a follow-up message will be issued later

WEA sent 11/17/2022 This is an example of a beautiful post-alert message. It is complete, includes all of the necessary content, and assures message receivers that not only was the order lifted, but the water is now safe for consumption. When alerts are sent without an expiration time, it is the responsibility of the alerting originator to follow up with a message that reduces uncertainty and provides closure to the message receiver. In this case, the City references the w

WEA sent 11/15/2022. While it is understandable that alert originators would prefer to limit their use of WEA to prevent over-alerting (a valid concern and one that could be leading to people turning WEA off on their mobile devices), when a message contains the words "until further notice," there is an expectation that a second notice will be issued as a post-alert safety message through WEA or another channel. Adding a url for further information would be a strategy to redu

Top WEA sent 11/4/2022 1:23 pm CDT Bottom WEA sent 11/4/2022 1:20 pm CDT External message consistency is just as important as internal message consistency. When messages that are sent by different organizations to the same population differ in their description of the hazard and its potential severity, actions may be delayed by message receivers who search for confirmatory information. Here we have an example of two WEAs sent within minutes of each other to nearly identical