On Thu, 26 Jul 2018, Brian Kantor wrote:
I can see my way clear to supporting this bill ONLY if it ALSO
proposes to enhance the liabilities for officials of agencies
who issue a false or disproportionate alert.
Section 5 of the proposed bill is about emergency alert best practices.
That includes best practices for officials to avoid issuing false alerts.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/3238/text
For non-weather emergencies, you are far more likely NOT to get any
warning during a catastrophe. Almost all of the deaths have occured when
emergency officials did not have, did not use or had problems activating
warning systems. Local officials don't get a lot of practice issuing
public warnings, and tend to be shy about issuing public warnings until
its too late.
For weather warnings, the National Weather Service tends to issue a lot of
warnings. Weather radios let you turn off types of warning messages you
aren't interested. I want to be woken up before a tsunami, I don't want
to be woken up about coastal flooding.
Weather fatalities
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats.shtml
Yes, false alerts happen. False alerts should be minimized. You are
extremelly unlikely to die as the result of a false alert.
Lack of warning really sucks when it happens to you. Its even worse than
missing your package delivery notification.
