I’m angrier than a wireless phone customer over the fact that authorities apparently don’t know how to properly handle the WEA system here in New York state. You see, yesterday, there were major 911 outages in Massachusetts. For some reason, an alert for NYS was activating first saying that 911 was down. Then another alert advised that the 911 system is in fact up.
Here’s the problem: many people, myself included, did not get the first alert, so all I got out of it was the system is working. And that justifies an alert, which should only be used during a real emergency? Of course not. When the alert went off, I immediately thought Putin went nuts and nuked us.I reached over and grabbed my phone. No, it was just a screw up that, during a real emergency, could happen.
As for who got either alert, a person who was in the same room as me got neither alert. She jumped a bit when the alert went off on my phone, but her phone didn’t go off at all. That’s concerning. What if this had been a real emergency, like Putin or an earthquake or whatever?
So it’s a bad thing that this was a false alert. But it’s a good thing that it happened during a non-event, so that authorities can fix the issues before someone gets hurt during a valid emergency.