{"id":43488,"date":"2019-06-19T10:48:04","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T14:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=43488"},"modified":"2019-06-19T10:48:16","modified_gmt":"2019-06-19T14:48:16","slug":"investigation-finds-wildfire-emergency-alerts-lacking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/06\/investigation-finds-wildfire-emergency-alerts-lacking\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigation Finds Wildfire Emergency Alerts Lacking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsy.com\/embed\/91386\/\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"auto\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>An analysis found almost 1 in 3 counties at heightened\nwildfire risk are unable or unwilling to use FEMA&#8217;s emergency alert system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Chimney Tops 2 wildfire began on Thanksgiving weekend in\n2016 as a typical forest fire deep in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park\nof eastern Tennessee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Five days into the fight to contain the blaze, hurricane-force\nwind launched embers for miles, firebombing the parched, dense woods\nsurrounding the resort town of Gatlinburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt was the perfect firestorm,\u201d Sevier County Mayor Larry\nWaters said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like it exploded.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First responders scrambled to evacuate thousands of people,\nbut the county never sent evacuation messages to cellphones. Emergency alert\nmessages on TV and radio came hours after the disaster began.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fourteen people died, including a mother and her two young\ndaughters. They were trapped on a mountain suddenly engulfed in flames, their\nescape blocked by fallen trees and utility poles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNobody called us telling us. We had no text messages,\u201d said\nGenie Brabham, whose cabin burned. \u201cThe paid officials who get paid to protect\nand serve didn\u2019t say a thing, just left us here to die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The mayor said in hindsight, evacuation efforts probably\nshould have started earlier but officials struggled to understand the scope and\nfast growth of the fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Across the country, community officials are failing to send\nemergency alerts to cellphones, televisions and radios during mega wildfires,\ndepriving families of time to escape with their lives.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A investigation found local authorities responsible for\nevacuations often are unable or unwilling to use FEMA\u2019s Integrated Public Alert\nand Warning System (IPAWS).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>IPAWS, online since 2012, is the only way to send warnings\nsimultaneously to all cellphones, TVs and radios in the danger zone during a\nwildfire. Newsy found dozens of counties in forested areas still unable to use\nthe system, even as more people build homes in wooded areas and as climate\nchange and other factors, such as overgrowth, turn more forests into kindling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unlike with weather disasters, the federal government leaves\nit to communities to issue their own warnings during fires because fire is not\nconsidered a weather event. FEMA makes IPAWS available to local authorities,\nbut they must first go through a number of steps to get certified to use the\nsystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The process begins with reaching out to FEMA to formally\nrequest access to IPAWS, something Sevier County, Tenn., had not done before\nthe wildfire. The county instead relied on the state emergency management\noffice to use IPAWS for them in an emergency. That plan failed the night of the\nfire when communications with the state broke down. FEMA recommends local\nauthorities have their own access to IPAWS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The team examined 321 counties with as many or more people\nliving in wildland areas as Sevier County and found, as of March, 97 \u2014 30\npercent \u2014 still haven\u2019t signed up to use IPAWS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mark Lucero, chief engineer of IPAWS at FEMA, said only a\nfraction of places eligible to be on the network have sought access to it.\nOther places have FEMA\u2019s approval to use IPAWS, but don\u2019t send alerts in\nemergencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhat we&#8217;ve seen is that there&#8217;s a pretty small percentage\nof people who actually have access to IPAWS that are really using it, and we&#8217;re\ntrying to figure out why that is,\u201d Lucero said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dianna Bryant, a crisis and disaster management expert at\nthe University of Central Missouri, said cost helps explain the slow adoption.\nFEMA requires governments to use a third-party alerting software to log into\nIPAWS. The price can range from $28,000 for smaller governments like Sevier\nCounty to hundreds of thousands of dollars for major cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou&#8217;re talking about spending money on something that you\nmight not ever use,\u201d Bryant said. \u201cIt is a hard decision to make financially\nfor a local government, especially when we have fire departments that don&#8217;t\neven have an internet connection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once a county or other place has paid for IPAWS-compatible\nsoftware, it still has to take FEMA training on how to use it. Often an\nauthority will start the process but never finish it, Lucero said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eighty-five people died in last year\u2019s Camp Fire wildfire in\nParadise, California. It was the deadliest and most destructive fire in the\nstate\u2019s history. Officials tried to use IPAWS, but the software wasn\u2019t set up\ncorrectly and alerts never went out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the Chimney Tops 2 fire, Sevier County reached out to\nFEMA to get access to the system and has trained multiple people on the\nnetwork.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An analysis found almost 1 in 3 counties at heightened wildfire risk are unable or unwilling to use FEMA&#8217;s emergency alert system. The Chimney Tops 2 wildfire began on Thanksgiving&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":43489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}