If a disaster happens, you don’t want to be left behind while everyone else is heading for the hills. It might feel that way to people who didn’t get emergency-alert messages on their smartphones during a test in B.C. on Wednesday. The new system of alerts was tested across the country over a couple of days this week, and the results were disturbingly spotty.
In Atlantic Canada, everyone got the test alert, but in Quebec no one got it. In the rest of the country, including B.C., some got the message and others didn’t. We should be concerned that emergency officials aren’t sure what went wrong.
The National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination System, operated by the company Pelmorex, sends the alerts to TV, radio, cable, satellite and wireless providers, which then send it on to their audiences. It’s a valuable application of modern technology because it can reach across the country and target the message to those who most need to hear it when there is an earthquake, tsunami, flood or other emergency.
But it has to be reliable.
The experts are busy with post-mortems and will no doubt figure out the source of the problems. In the meantime, we have old-fashioned warning systems.
Whether the warnings are high-tech or low-tech, we all have to be sure we are educated and prepared for disasters. Here on the shaky West Coast, that means earthquakes and tsunamis.
If the ground starts moving, we all have to know what to do, even if the text message never comes.
