I think it's three times so far that I've removed myself from a gov't emergency alert service, due to poor use of it.
Once I was awaked by an ungodly alarm noise that I didn't know my smartphone could make, and which should only be used for something apocalyptic like a tsunami warning (e.g., you have 3 minutes to get to the top of the hill, or you will probably die). Some kind of Amber Alert, to the greater metro area of millions of people. So I disabled it.
And, on a local emergency alert thing, someone used it to announce a city street cleaning or routine snow removal. I then went some trouble to opt-out of the alerts, more than it took to opt-in, like they wanted me to waive liability.
(Speaking of street cleaning, if only I could get the city to stop routinely driving a truck up and down the street in early morning, blaring numerous times over loudspeakers that there's a street cleaning sometime in the next couple hours, and any cars should be moved before they are towed. Rolling through the streets, making stern announcements on loudspeakers, to be heard inside homes, is what you do to announce that you have invaded the city with tanks, and anyone caught outside will be shot. Not to repeatedly wake up a neighborhood of sleep-deprived students and researchers and hospital workers, who mostly don't even own cars.)
I'd think we're incapable of handling any real emergency, except I spent awhile listening in on local emergency services radio (police, fire, ambulance), and it's really impressive how on the ball in an emergency some can be. I wish some others -- who don't seem to have that training, experience, and discipline -- wouldn't grab the emergency alerts ball, and drop it.
Once I was awaked by an ungodly alarm noise that I didn't know my smartphone could make, and which should only be used for something apocalyptic like a tsunami warning (e.g., you have 3 minutes to get to the top of the hill, or you will probably die). Some kind of Amber Alert, to the greater metro area of millions of people. So I disabled it.
And, on a local emergency alert thing, someone used it to announce a city street cleaning or routine snow removal. I then went some trouble to opt-out of the alerts, more than it took to opt-in, like they wanted me to waive liability.
(Speaking of street cleaning, if only I could get the city to stop routinely driving a truck up and down the street in early morning, blaring numerous times over loudspeakers that there's a street cleaning sometime in the next couple hours, and any cars should be moved before they are towed. Rolling through the streets, making stern announcements on loudspeakers, to be heard inside homes, is what you do to announce that you have invaded the city with tanks, and anyone caught outside will be shot. Not to repeatedly wake up a neighborhood of sleep-deprived students and researchers and hospital workers, who mostly don't even own cars.)
I'd think we're incapable of handling any real emergency, except I spent awhile listening in on local emergency services radio (police, fire, ambulance), and it's really impressive how on the ball in an emergency some can be. I wish some others -- who don't seem to have that training, experience, and discipline -- wouldn't grab the emergency alerts ball, and drop it.