What Happens When Emergency Alerts Don’t Alert Everyone?

On July 4, intense rainfall pounded the Hill Country region of central Texas, triggering a flash flood that rapidly inundated local communities. As the water flooded the area, so too did messages and radio alerts from the National Weather Service warning people to seek higher ground. 

However, these messages lacked orders for specific locations to evacuate—a decision that is up to local officials. For many people in Kerr County, the hardest hit by the floods, that message didn’t come until well after the water had already swept away their homes, belongings and many of their loved ones, ProPublica reports. 

More than two months after the Hill Country disaster that killed at least 135 people, federal and local officials are still unraveling what went wrong with local alert usage and protocols in the region and how to change them. It’s far from the first time government officials have fumbled the rollout of their emergency alert systems during a disaster, as evidenced by similar failures during recent tropical storms and the fires that swept through Los Angeles County in January. 

But as climate change fuels more severe hurricanes, wildfires and other extreme weather, the stakes for effective alert systems are getting higher. And new research shows that warnings are not reaching many of the communities that are most vulnerable during disasters. 

Complex Systems: Chances are that everyone reading this has received some sort of weather alert in recent years. They can be overwhelming, often coming from a variety of sources—from federal agencies to local meteorologists—and bombarding all channels of communication, including emails, texts, radio and social media.

This type of information blast is crucial for reaching the most people possible during an emergency. But it can also get messy. 

At a national level, the Federal Emergency Management Agency operates the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), a tool that enables simultaneous distribution of information during a disaster across multiple platforms. When the National Weather Service issues an alert, the information is disseminated through IPAWS and sent directly to commercial wireless carriers who broadcast the message from cell towers in the threat area, meaning that people with phones will receive it automatically. 

More than 2,000 federal, state, local, tribal and territorial alerting authorities also use the IPAWS system. But it is complex, with a steep technological learning curve that can be difficult for small, resource-constrained offices to overcome. That can have deadly consequences. 

In a recent investigation, ProPublica identified at least 15 federally declared major disasters since 2016 during which officials in the hardest-hit communities failed to send alerts over IPAWS or sent them too late. For example, when Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina last October, 29 counties that saw storm-related deaths did not send out alerts using IPAWS—even if they were certified to do so, CBS News reports. 

Many counties that are not yet certified to use IPAWS instead use opt-in alert tools, meaning users must register to receive messages. This method comes with its own set of issues, especially for tourist towns where visitors likely aren’t opted in. 

But even locals don’t always take part: A recent report by scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder found that just four of every 10 Colorado residents have opted to receive local emergency alerts. This gap is largely due to lack of awareness, particularly for communities with language barriers, according to report co-author Carson MacPherson-Krutsky. 

“Smaller rural counties, which may have a large percent of people who have limited English proficiency … might not know that they need to sign up for an alert,” she told me. MacPherson-Krutsky added that similar barriers exist for people with hearing loss or blindness. A wide body of research shows that people with disabilities or those who struggle to understand English fare the worst during disasters. 

“They’re more at risk already, and then not receiving that information kind of continues that outcome,” she said.

Deadly Miscommunication: Gaps in adequate translations during weather disasters have long been a problem in the United States. For example, when Winter Storm Uri hit Texas in 2021, failures to issue timely and translated alerts for Asian American and Pacific Islander communities and people with disabilities led to a higher death toll across the state, research suggests.

In 2023, the National Weather Service began automated emergency-weather translation services in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Samoan. The Trump administration briefly discontinued this initiative in April, then reinstated the program later in the month following pushback, Grist reports. But many local government emergency offices don’t have the resources or expertise to translate their own weather and evacuation alerts. 

When MacPherson-Krutsky and her colleagues surveyed more than 200 officials about this translation problem for their report, “willingness was not an issue,” she said. “But I think in terms of their readiness and their ability to do that, those can be compromised by cost or training or personnel availability, software limitations—there’s a whole host of barriers that are oftentimes getting in the way.”

Other times, disaster communication failures come down to an office’s hesitation to issue an alert in the first place. Jeff Howell, the emergency manager in Yancey County, North Carolina, during Hurricane Helene, told ProPublica that part of the reason he didn’t try harder to send an IPAW alert during the disaster was that he didn’t want the message to mistakenly go to neighboring counties, which had happened a few years before. Now retired, he told the publication that he wished he had tried harder.

Issuing alerts when there isn’t a severe disaster can have its own consequences, both in the short and long term. A mistakenly sent evacuation warning alert blasted to millions of people across the LA region—many of whom were actually not in high-risk areas—sparked outrage during the January fires. And research shows that if someone evacuated during a disaster and felt that it was unnecessary, they are less likely to plan to evacuate in the future. 

So, how should the U.S. remedy this disaster disorganization? There’s not a single straightforward answer, MacPherson-Krutsky said, but she thinks one of the best places to start is with consistency. There’s no federal policy guiding local officials on how to send emergency alerts, who should receive them and what they ought to say.

“I would love to see a more standardized system across the U.S., so people can really begin to trust and use these systems” in a way they aren’t currently, she said. “I also would love to see, with that, protocols that are thinking about populations who are more impacted when disasters happen, because I think a lot of these systems maybe weren’t built with that in mind.”

More Top Climate News 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s newly released numbers for large whale entanglements last year were grim: 95 whales were confirmed to be wrapped in gear last year. That’s 31 more whales than were identified as entangled in 2023. The vast majority were humpbacks, though several other species were affected as well, including four endangered North Atlantic right whales. It’s possible this is an undercount: The figures only represent reported entanglements. Experts say that “ropeless” fishing or pop-up gear—which I wrote about last year—could help prevent future whale deaths. 

“It’s horrifying to see these iconic animals killed and injured by the dozen when we know that pop-up fishing gear can help prevent entanglements,” Ben Grundy, an oceans campaigner for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “This is a red alert for state agencies and federal officials.”

Hurricane Helene led to a sharp rise in student homelessness for several counties in North Carolina, with more than 2,500 identified as homeless as a direct result of the storm, according to state data obtained by The Associated Press. Though schools reopened, many students remain without a permanent residence after their home was destroyed by the storm. Climate-fueled extreme weather is increasingly affecting childhood education, an issue I covered in 2024. 

Climate change is hitting the wine industry hard, but hybrid grapes could provide a more resilient alternative for vineyards around the world, Eric Asimov reports for The New York Times. Hybrid grapes represent a cross between Vitis vinifera—the species that accounts for all the most notable wine—and various grape species native to North America, and are less susceptible to diseases becoming more common with warming temperatures. However, hybrid vino is still what Asimov calls a “fringe movement”—for now, at least. 

Postcard From … California 

For this installment of “Postcards From,” Today’s Climate reader Jett sent in a photo from Oakland, California. 

“I observe and document lifeforms in and around Oakland, CA, and post the observations to [iNaturalist], a wonderful and vital global nonprofit social network and citizen science project,” Jett told me over email. “This lovely being, the green metallic Fine-striped Sweat Bee, was photographed feeding on a flower in the Gardens at Lake Merritt, located in Oakland, in late June of this year.”