Another excellent post shared by @zachstanford, who helps to highlight how we can use the Message Design Dashboard and effective practices found in the Warning Lexicon to make preparedness messages just as actionable as an alert or warning.
If you've been a reader of this blog for long, you know that wildfire messaging is highly inconsistent across organizations and relies upon local knowledge to interpret the hazard, threat phase, and actions that should accompany the message. You can read about it here in the ope-access version of the paper on Ember Alerts (Kuligowski, Waugh, Sutton, & Cova 2023). Because these messages frequently slip over geofenced boundaries, and because wildfires don't really pay attention to geographical lines, using PLAIN LANGUAGE in a WEA becomes really important. Let's take a look.
In the original alert, they highlight location information (Clear Creek and Cache Creek) and the alerting language that the communities are in a particular status "pre-evacuation." They also indicate that message receivers in those areas should be prepared to evacuate The language contained here provides limited direction and instruction to message receivers and yet there's a lot of room to add details that can help people to get ready to leave (or decided to leave if they want to get out early).
In the revised message, we see the name of the sending organization is clearly provided (Chaffee County Emergency Management) without the use of an acronym that may be unfamiliar to message receivers.
The revised message indicates the hazard (a WILDFIRE is burning) and specifies where the fire is located (near twin lakes and spreading south toward the areas that should prepare to evacuate).
The message instructs people to PREPARE NOW, which means to gather supplies as well as to be ready to leave if they are advised to do so. By gathering supplies and other essential items early, they can be ready to go if the wildfire begins to threaten their location. The new message also provides some pre-evacuation information for planning purposes: you're going to need to travel SOUTH.
This is a complete message that addresses the questions that message receivers will have about the message source, hazard and potential impacts, location, time, and protective actions to take. These contents are important in the preparedness phase for fast-moving events where there is still time to gather supplies and other valuables and to inform message receivers that PREPARE also means BE READY TO LEAVE without delay. Sending this type of complete message may reduce the time that people take to prepare themselves when an evacuation order is issued.
Writing a message at the time of the hazard is hard work - its easy to overlook key contents that are necessary for communicating clearly. One strategy to overcome this is to use the Message Design Dashboard, which requires message writers to use the workflow to create a complete message. Another strategy is to pre-create templates for messages that can be edited and adapted to specific contexts.
For more recommended contents, be sure to download The Warning Lexicon - it's free and offers step-by-step instructions on how to write a better warning message.
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