Remember the federal government’s nationwide test last month of its emergency alert system?
“This is a test…” flashed across millions of mobile devices at about 2:18 p.m. on Oct. 4.
They’re called wireless emergency alerts. And the City of Buffalo will use the same system for extreme weather text alerts this winter season.
The wireless emergency alerts are issued via Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Integrated Public Alert Warning System (IPAWS). It allows officials to warn the public of an impending natural or man-made disaster or threat – like the Christmas blizzard last December.
The program is included in the city’s snow plan for the 2023-24 winter season.
“One of the things that we learned out of that last blizzard experience is to be much more emphatic with communication to residents,” Mayor Byron W. Brown told The Buffalo News editorial board Thursday while discussing the emergency alerts.
During the deadly 2022 blizzard that killed 46 people in Erie County, the city sent out warnings through its BuffAlert system, but only 16% of the city’s residents were signed up to receive those texts, according to a report that examined Buffalo’s blizzard response.
FEMA established IPAWS in 2006. Today, more than 1,600 federal, state and local authorities use IPAWS to issue critical public alerts and warnings in their jurisdictions.
The program authorizes public safety officials to send emergency and lifesaving information and warnings to wireless service providers. The providers then push the emergency alerts from cell towers to mobile devices in a targeted area, geolocated to specific ZIP codes. The emergency alerts appear like text messages on mobile devices enabled for such alerts.
“IPAWS will enable us to push right into somebody’s cellphone,” said Deirdre Quain, the Brown administration’s director of policy. “If somebody doesn’t sign up for BuffAlert; if somebody doesn’t have Facebook; if…
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