Last year, the federal weather service revamped its criteria for issuing alerts, mindful that it might have been overusing the Wireless Emergency Alert system.
A barrage of other alerts from a litany of apps lit up phone screens throughout the night — prompting some to wonder if people were just too inundated with information to take the threat seriously.played in a tragedy that killed scores of people across the Northeast,
“It’s either they don’t believe the information that they’re hearing — they can’t verify it — or there’s some other reason that is completely out of anybody’s control,” said Ross Dickman, the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service in New York. The ubiquity of cellphones makes the devices a key tool for urgently informing the public of dangerous weather, including hurricanes and tornadoes. It's also used for Amber Alerts to enlist the public to help locate missing children. Authorities have also used cellphone alerts to help authorities nab dangerous people, including a terrorist who set off a bomb four years ago in New York City's Chelsea district.
“So if we have warnings that we’re going to see very severe, rapid rainfall with flash flooding,” he said, “what is it that we actually want people to do? Other than advise people it’s going to happen, do we want them to go to shelters? If so, do we have shelters for them to go?”
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