In the post, Nuclear Alert Sirens Fall Short For The Deaf And Hard Of Hearing,” Greg Sunshine points out that in the event of a radiological emergency, people who live within a 10-mile radius of nuclear power plants will hear a system of sirens sound the alert. However, for their deaf and hard of hearing neighbors, the sound of the sirens alone provides no warning whatsoever. He explains:

According to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (”NRC”) regulations, each nuclear power plant must have an emergency notifications system for its surrounding 10-mile “emergency planning zone.” The purpose of the sirens is to let residents know that some type of emergency has occurred, and to tune to their television or radio for specific Emergency Alert System (”EAS”) instructions (the same EAS that interrupts late night television for a weekly test).

Although the Americans with Disabilities Act requires television EAS messages to include closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing, without an alternative to the sirens, residents who cannot hear the sirens will not know to check their television in the first place. This creates a significant notification problem for radiological emergencies when getting quick emergency information could save lives.

Although sirens provide no notice to the almost 1,000,000 Americans who are functionally deaf, the NRC inspection manual indicates that sirens are an acceptable means of notifying the populace. In fact, NRC Inspection Procedure 71114.02 – which provides the guidelines for inspecting plants’ alert and notification system – indicates that sirens are the primary means of notification. According to the manual, if a plant’s siren system is adequate, the plant is considered to have met the “notice to the populace” requirement, regardless of how many deaf or hard of hearing residents would receive no such notice.

Though Sunshine points out that there are steps deaf and hard of hearing citizens can take to overcome the notification gap:

First, deaf and hard of hearing residents should call their sheriff’s office to ensure that the computer aided dispatch system has them listed as residents with difficulty hearing. Doing so may allow the residents to receive notice from the sheriff’s office if it implements route alerting (where officers drive a specific route disseminating information via loudspeaker), and would also ensure that a telecommunications device for the deaf (known as a TDD or a TTY) is used for phone conversations.

Residents should also determine whether their county, or a neighboring county, uses some type of text alert system to notify residents via text message of possible local emergencies (most often weather-related). If the county does not have a text alert system, residents should purchase a special needs weather radio. Conveniently, both the text alert and weather radios are also tied to the EAS. Therefore, if the EAS begins to notify residents of a radiological emergency at a nearby nuclear power plant, it is likely that a text alert system would be used to notify those who have enrolled in the service. If EAS is activated, the weather radios will provide notice to residents through means viable to the deaf or hard of hearing, such as “visual and vibrating alarms and simple text readouts.”

People with difficulty hearing should also determine if their county has a reverse 911 system in place, and if so, enroll in it. Reverse 911 acts as an automated calling service that calls residents entered into its database and plays a prerecorded message with emergency instructions. If such a system calls a deaf or hard of hearing resident, that resident’s TDD would translate the message into text.

Finally, FEMA advises people who are deaf or hard of hearing to “plan ahead for someone to convey essential emergency information to you if you are unable to use the TV or radio.” While this and the aforementioned efforts may not provide the same immediate notice as the sirens, they are better than no notice at all.

Although deaf and hard of hearing residents can take steps to mitigate this notification gap, the difficult reality remains that this group of citizens faces an ongoing safety disadvantage until the system is modified.

Today, just after drill testing its 177 outdoor warning sirens, officials requested through Facebook and Twitter that residents tell them if they had heard or not heard it. On Facebook (below) they received a “fail” from one resident.

Below is the Twitter tweet:

They received two positive confirmations (below).

I think this a terrific use of Facebook and Twitter by emergency managers to get instant public feedback. Johnson County Assistant Director Adam Crowe told me by e-mail that it has also has helped improve the relationship between the office and the community:

“In the past we have always struggled with getting feedback from the community-at-large in a constructive format. Typically, we only heard from citizens who were extremely upset about the timing or location of our siren testing, while now it has become more of a partnership with the community to know when, why, and how our emergency preparedness program works.”

As I’ve discussed before, the LAFD is a pioneer in the use of communications technology including social media to inform and engage the public. I am a subscriber to its text/e-mail breaking news notification system, LAFD_Alert, which provides has provided as much up-to-date information direct to the citizenry as any governmental emergency agency that I am aware of. This can be particularly useful for those in the Los Angeles area in quickly changing situations such as wildfires. Officials can use the alerts and the LAFD blog to disseminate information about fires (or other incidents such as a building explosion in South Los Angeles), and the Department’s response and instructions for the public.

What I wanted to highlight today is more trivial, but I thought was worth a mention. In two of his news alerts Friday, LAFD PIO Erik Scott added some humanity to a communications form that tends to be pretty straightforward and antiseptic. He wrote hopefully about the aftermath of a structure fire in which a one adult male was killed but another was “critically burned but *ALIVE*”.

From: lafdlistmaster@lacity.org

Subject: [LAFD ALERT] Structure Fire 7/30/2010

Date: July 30, 2010 5:09:15 PM EDT

To: LAFDLISTMASTER@LACITY.ORG

*UPDATE: 936 E 59th St* CORRECTION: 2 total victims: 1st patient- Adult male DECEASED due to electrocution. 2nd patient- Adult male critically burned but *ALIVE* [my bold]  in ICU at California hsp & will be tsp to USC hsp. – Erik Scott###

From: lafdlistmaster@lacity.org

In a subsequent text, Scott offered an update adding a small editorial and human comment: “Sadly Both victims have deceased.”

Subject: [LAFD ALERT] Structure Fire 7/30/2010

Date: July 30, 2010 3:01:22 PM EDT

To: LAFDLISTMASTER@LACITY.ORG

*UPDATE: 936 E 59th St* Sadly Both victims have deceased [my bold], 1 from the blast & the other from electrocution. The fire was caused by illegal tampering w/ gas meter. NFD – Erik Scott###

I’m not saying that every governmental emergency alert needs to have that personal touch on each message. However, as the authorities increasingly try to get citizens to subscribe to these useful notification systems it can only be helpful if the messages are sometimes more engaging than usual government communications. Anyway, I will have some more thoughts about personalization in citizen preparedness messaging on Monday.

The LAFD Breaking News alert widget

According to the piece, “For No Signs of Trouble, Kill the Alarm,”:

When an oil worker told investigators on July 23 that an alarm to warn of explosive gas on the Transocean rig in the Gulf of Mexico had been intentionally disabled months before, it struck many people as reckless.

Reckless, maybe, but not unusual. On Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board said that a crash last year on the Washington subway system that killed nine people had happened partly because train dispatchers had been ignoring 9,000 alarms per week. Air traffic controllers, nuclear plant operators, nurses in intensive-care units and others do the same.

Mark R. Rosekind, a psychologist who is a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the cases had something in common. “The volume of alarms desensitizes people,” he said. “They learn to ignore them.”

James P. Keller Jr., vice president of the ECRI Institute, formerly the Emergency Care Research Institute, has a name for it: “alarm fatigue.” In a recent Web seminar for health care professionals, he asked participants if their hospital colleagues had become desensitized to any important alarms in the last two years. Three-quarters said yes. “This suggests it’s a pretty pervasive problem,” he said.

The article focuses on the impact of “alarm fatigue” on industry workers. However, I think it is also relevant to how alarms, warnings and alerts are communicated to the broader public. The full piece can be found here.

The post, written by Lorin Bristow, reacts to a recent study of more than 400 notification system decision-makers, in which 58% said they use their systems for “emergency situations only” while 42% said they use it for “emergency, urgent, and non-emergency situations equally.” Bristow lays out the two “camps”:

For those in the “emergency only” camp, there is often a fear by managers that frequent use will desensitize citizens to alerts. If the public receives regular, routine messages through the notification system, according to the theory, people may ignore alerts when a real crisis exists. Also, the E911 data used to populate these systems may not legally be applicable for non-emergency situations–another possible factor.

For those in the “emergency and non-emergency” camp, there is a belief that more liberal use provides citizens with greater familiarity and deeper comfort in interacting with the system. It also serves as a highly visible connection point between citizens and first responder agencies, creating a sense of community involvement and trust.

Bristow says he’s in the latter camp:

I suppose we lean toward the latter camp. In all our years of involvement in ENS, the most memorable and innovative notification programs tended toward a greater frequency of use. In these agencies, systems and procedures are exercised regularly and users are often better trained. This leads to greater confidence and fewer mistakes. Further, citizens appreciate the system, feeling local public safety agencies are proactive and “on the ball.”

There is one caveat here, however. As a citizen, I don’t mind receiving frequent communications as long as the information is highly relevant to me. Flooding me with frivolous or poorly targeted information will annoy and frustrate me (I don’t really want to hear about the citizen watch meeting being held in a community on the other side of the county). So, even though we support using ENS for non-emergency purposes, we recommend these alerts be well targeted and highly relevant.

I agree with Bristow. I think there is a lot of government information that is useful to the public but might not rise to the level of  ’emergency communications’ (ie. street closings, low flying military aircraft in the area). I subscribe to a number of e-mail/text alerts from government authorities around the U.S., and have found that it is rare that I receive a notification that I think was superfluous even if it didn’t impact me directly. I also believe there is value in getting the public used to receiving notifications from their governmental entities (and enlisting more citizens to sign up for email/text alerts that can be targeted) in the advance of a major emergency.

Bledsoe believes that the emergency management field must move quickly into the 21st Century and capitalize on new technological tools in order to proactively communicate with their citizens and the media. However, in her email to me she cautioned that there is the potential of a “digital divide” between bigger cities, like Philadelphia and Miami, which can invest in major alert systems for their citizens and smaller areas like her own that does not have funding to provide that same capability.

As Bledsoe writes: 

I firmly believe that you will see a rich-poor gap developing with regards to governmental access to technology. I have already had the unfortunate situation of responding to a citizen, who lived in a town in Northern Virginia, and was used to receiving their email alerts about community problems. She was unhappy about the level of alert she received from our office following a significant community phone outage. When we checked into the system, we learned that they had invested over $300K in their alert and notification system. My annual budget for my whole EM program (for 424K in population) is about $500K and that is 90% personnel funding & benefits for 7 staff. I comparatively have about $15K allocated for technology which must maintain my Emergency Operations Center in addition to notification (which I have about 10K budgeted annually).

I really appreciate getting Bledsoe’s perspective. I have been enthusiastic about governments taking advantage of new technology to communicate with their citizens. However, her cautionary words about the potential for a digital divide in this area are very helpful and should be considered by national policymakers.

The LAFD is one of the growing number of governmental authorities that are offering citizens the opportunity to sign up for informational alerts. Because I am researching this topic I have signed up for a number of them around the nation even if it they don’t have practical relevance to me. It is fascinating to see these develop throughout the country as authorities experiment with new communications technology.

If you are interested in signing up for these alerts in your area, you should probably first check the emergency management websites of your local and state government. It is possible that there is not an alert available yet where you are. But it is likely that one is at least being discussed or developed. The LAFD is very much ahead of the curve on this, and most uniformed first responder services do not yet have this service.

If you live in Los Angeles or are interested in seeing this:

http://groups.google.com/group/LAFD_ALERT

Here in New York State, an email/text program, NY Alert, has recently been launched. John Gibb, the Director of New York State’s Emergency Management office, told me in Albany recently that in the first month one million of the possible 19 million users have already signed up. It points out the great interest from the public in receiving emergency information. At present, all these systems are in their infancy and have somewhat limited impact, but the potential is huge.

http://www.nyalert.gov/

The City of New York has just launched its alert system, NotifyNYC, in four pilot communities and will be expanding it soon.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/notifynyc/html/home/home.shtml

The transportation area is also where public alerts are being used. Many state and local highway systems offer email or text information regarding traffic and construction. Mass transit is another interesting example, including the Washington Metro subway system which offers alerts on delayed trains among other incidents. 

http://www.wmata.com/riding/alerts/metrorail_alerts.cfm

On a national level, the FBI has expanded its email alert system which covers many of its responsibilities, including terrorist alerts:

http://www.fbi.gov/pressroom.htm