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Why America Still Can't Get Disaster Alerts Right
US's emergency-warning infrastructure failed to prevent more than 100 deaths during flash flooding in Kerr County, Texas over the July 4 weekend, despite repeated warnings from the National Weather Service. At least 27 young campers and counselors died at Camp Mystic when the Guadalupe River surged ...
The alerts never reached residents who lacked cellphone service, had silenced notifications, or didn't carry phones with them.Similar communication failures occurred during recent Los Angeles wildfires and Maui blazes. Federal, state and local authorities share responsibility for alerting citizens through multiple platforms, but the country's patchwork of digital and physical emergency-alert tools often lags behind rapidly developing weather events, WSJ argues. The Atlantic has a story that adds more color: It details how officials lack training in writing effective alerts, how messages like "move to higher ground" are meaningless without context, and how the absence of warning-coordination meteorologists creates communication gaps between weather services and local authorities.
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