WEA sent 2/24/2023
Some alerts and warnings warrant a great amount of detail to help message receivers understand the threat and what they should do to protect themselves. This alert is not one of them. When an event such as a 911 outage has the potential to affect emergency services, a WEA can be the difference between life and death. That is not the case here. While it would be tempting to point out that there was no threat precipitating this particular WEA, the more challenging issue here is how complicated the message is to read and interpret. Simplicity is key. An easy fix it to do the following: - tell your audience who the message is coming from - explain that there is a phone/911 service outage (at XX time) in (name of area) community - describe how people can reach emergency services and instruct them when it is relevant to call for help (injury, health, etc.) - give information about where to find more information and/or when the message will be updated By eliminating the extra words, a reader can more easily identify who the message is from, what is happening and why it matters, how to protect themselves if they need to, and when or where they will get an update.
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