28 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER_2012

The American fl ag

fl ies high over

homes burned by

the Waldo Canyon

fi re near Colorado

Springs, Colo.,

in early July.

MICHAEL RIEGER/FEMA

EMERGENCYMGMT.COM 29

FLAWED DELIVERY?Do alert notifications fail to live up to expectations?

B Y R I C K W I M B E R LY

30 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER_2012

To facilitate evacuations, authori-

ties used a jointly operated telephone

alerting system and made fi re-related

calls to the public in the Waldo Canyon

area on 48 di& erent occasions.

Using this system, more than 32,000

people were evacuated from their homes,

but the limits of automated telephone

alerting systems were clearly exposed.

E& orts to call at least 20,000 homes

failed, and some residents said they

never received a call to evacuate.

The problems with the Waldo Canyon

telephone alerts have attracted attention

because of the situation’s seriousness, but the

same types of challenges have been reported

nationwide. The telephone alerting systems’

main problems can be broken down into

two general, yet contradictory, categories:

• In some situations, o. cials did not

have residents’ telephone numbers,

making calls impossible.

• In other cases, something went wrong

with the local automated notifi cation

system and calls weren’t delivered, perhaps

because too many calls were being made.

Lack of telephone numbers is often

a byproduct of the fact that many

homes no longer have land lines.

Where land lines are used, obtaining

telephone numbers isn’t di. cult.

Databases can be purchased that include

most land line telephone numbers, including

unlisted numbers through the same data-

bases used by 911 centers to help identify a

caller’s location. Even as people replace their

traditional land lines served through a tele-

phone company (called a “switched access

line”) with voice over Internet protocol

(VoIP), land line numbers are generally

available. The FCC ensured this by requiring

that VoIP phone numbers be published.

Even with increases in VoIP lines, the

number of land lines — whether VoIP or

switched access — has dropped, while the

number of cellphones has increased signifi -

cantly. Because there’s no central repository

of cellphone numbers, local public safety

o. cials don’t have these numbers to call.

The only entities that know the numbers

are the individual cell companies, of which

there are more than 180 — and they do not

disclose their customers’ phone numbers.

In fact, the number of phone lines

in the U.S. — both switched access and

VoIP — dropped from 162.7 million in

2008 to 145.8 million in 2011, according to

a report issued by the FCC’s Local Tele-

phone Competition in June 2012. During

the same time frame, mobile telephone

subscribers increased by more than 5 million.

According to CTIA—The Wireless Asso-

ciation, there are more than 331 million

wireless telephone subscribers in the U.S.

Evacuees who relied solely on

a cellphone for their home

phone only received a call

if they’d signed up for it.

The Denver Post found that

fewer than 13,000 of the 525,000 adults in

El Paso and Teller counties had registered

their cellphones to receive emergency alerts

prior to the fi res. Sign-up rates were not

much better in two other large Colorado

counties that experienced recent wildfi res.

However, since the El Paso and Teller

wildfi res, cellphone number sign-ups have

increased. Local o. cials said that during

the Waldo Canyon fi re, more than 35,000

people signed up to receive emergency

alerts in El Paso and Teller counties.

Other communities have reported

an increase in alert system registra-

tions during or immediately after an

emergency, but often too late to have

an impact during the incident.

FLAWED DELIVERY?

Wildfires that threatened lives and property of Colorado

residents in El Paso and Teller counties this year were the most destructive wildfires in state history — 29 square miles around Colorado Springs burned, destroying more than 340 homes, and causing two deaths and personal property damage exceeding $352 million.

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FLAWED DELIVERY?

The two people who died in the

Waldo Canyon fi re had not signed up to

receive alerts via their cellphones, and

they didn’t have a home phone number

listed, according to local authorities.

Some communities across the country

have been aggressive, even creative, in

convincing the public to sign up. Dubuque,

Iowa, o% ered a fi nancial incentive. The city

agreed to waive fi nes for illegal parking

in snow clearance routes if residents

signed up to receive automated notifi ca-

tions. If they didn’t sign up, they could be

fi ned $30 per violation. San Diego County

o% ered free pizza to the fi rst 500 people

who registered their mobile phones with

the local alerting system. In Santa Clara

County, Calif., local o+ cials used TV,

radio and print ads to encourage sign-ups.

The ads were not typical public service

announcements, but were humorous and

creative. Eddie Kurtz of Circlepoint, the

company that produced the ads, said the

campaign shunned a fear-based approach

and instead tapped into personal relation-

ships and everyday people. The county used

the slogan, “I love you. Please sign up.”

Several alert vendors o% er their public

safety customers assistance to encourage

people to sign up. Linda Young, a spokes-

woman for Cassidian Communications, the

vendor El Paso and Teller counties use for

alerting and notifi cation, said her company is

developing a “self-registration success kit” for

implementation and promotion of registra-

tions. Twenty First Century Communications

(TFCC), which o% ers large-scale emergency

calling systems for places like Los Angeles

County, encourages customers to solicit public

sign-ups through local schools, hospitals

and health-care centers. They also suggest

including sign-up reminders in utility bills.

While having too few phone

numbers can cause prob-

lems, so can having too

many phone numbers to

call. KMGH-TV in Colorado

Springs reported that it reviewed records

of more than 118,000 attempted calls and

found that more than 22,500 failed or, as the

records said, were “abandoned.” According

to Cassidian Communications, aban-

doned means a call was attempted but not

completed. This could have been caused by

heavy call volume. According to a company

representative, o+ cials will know more

after calling data is thoroughly analyzed.

Local circuit failures can occur during

heavy call volume. People naturally want to

talk on the telephone when a threat looms.

They seek additional information and want

to make sure friends and family are aware of

the situation. Additionally, natural skepti-

cism and confusion occur when people are

told to take an action like evacuate. The

desire to confi rm the evacuation order

or verify the nature of the emergency

also contributes to call volume and pres-

sure on the local calling infrastructure.

A study of the 2007 San Diego wild-

fi res by researchers at the Environmental

Sciences Division of Oak Ridge National

Laboratory — called Results of an Investi-

gation of the E" ectiveness of Using Reverse

Telephone Emergency Warning Systems in the

October 2007 San Diego Wildfi res — found that

citizens who received a reverse emergency

warning call were much likelier to evacuate

than those who hadn’t received a call. The

study also found that there was an even

greater probability that citizens contacted

by friends or family would evacuate.

Presumably, the informal contact often

occurred by phone, which added to the

call volume and potential overloads at

a critical point. The overloads could be

similar to the Mother’s Day syndrome when

circuits can be overtaxed by the unusu-

ally high volumes of calls being made.

The real problem is the “last mile,” said

Derrick Mar, a former chief technology

o+ cer for a company that operates large

telephone call-out operations. He said

carriers can “do more magic when calls

are in the digital form” through a maze

of connections. Carriers can reroute calls

to follow the path of least resistance —

until the calls hit the fi nal phone lines

between the last switch in the system

and the lines to homes and businesses.

These lines are often analog or copper

and lack the bandwidth of digital circuits

encountered elsewhere. Bottlenecks can

To encourage

residents to register

their cellphone

numbers with its

alerting system,

San Diego County

o� ered free pizza

to the fi rst 500

people who provided

their information.

AN

DR

EA

BO

OH

ER

/FE

MA

COLORADO’S ALERTING CHALLENGES

El Paso/Teller counties

Boulder County

Pueblo County

Total

Adult Population Cellphones Registered Percentage

525,000

225,000

119,000

869,000

13,000

12,925

717

26,642

2.5%

5.7%

0.6%

8.8%

SOURCE: THE DENVER POST

FLAWED DELIVERY?

occur when more calls reach the last mile

than analog switched access lines can

handle. Mar said replacement of analog

circuits with digital circuits on the last

mile have been very slow to come.

Some telephone alerting companies

o" er to throttle back calls when they detect

that the telephone infrastructure has been

overloaded. Bentley Cooper, director of

product management for TFCC, said his

company tries to mitigate overloading prob-

lems. He said TFCC has captured signifi cant

historical data on calling capacity, and gives

customers the ability to set the number

of calls to be placed into a specifi c area.

However, Cooper said the best practice

is for local public safety customers to work

with their alerting vendor to better under-

stand the local telephone-calling infrastruc-

ture. He said TFCC encourages public safety

customers to facilitate meetings involving

local carrier representatives to discuss

potential logjams. This will help set the

stage for when an emergency occurs and

heavy call volume is expected. The carriers

can be warned and then place calls from the

alerting system on what Cooper calls a “safe

list” to avoid blocking them while they halt

suspected mass telemarketing calls during

an emergency. Cooper said this requires

coordination and relationships established

in advance. “It helps when we’ve already

established contact with the carrier.”

Despite best practices, these e" orts

don’t necessarily solve the problem.

Cooper said we often don’t know

it’s occurring until it happens.

“It’s an ongoing problem for vendors,”

he said. “You want to send messages

fast enough to get the word out quickly

without overloading the carrier.”

Based on information from the

Oak Ridge study of the San Diego

wildfi res people want to confi rm

emergency information before

evacuation — often via telephone.

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It’s safe to say that telephone alerting,

despite its imperfections, will continue to

play an important role in emergency alerts.

One of the organizations that faces

the realities of telephone alerting and has

been successful in working around some of

the obstacles is the New York State O* ce

of Emergency Management (OEM) .

The OEM created its own alerting system

and is o" ering it to other states for use. The

system, called NY-Alert, has more than 5.8

million people in its alerting database. More

than 1.7 million have signed up to receive

alerts through the system. Registrations

amount to approximately 12 percent of the

state’s adult population. “Through multi-

member households and in the workplace, the

message will reach the general population that

has not yet subscribed,” said OEM spokesman

Dennis Michalski, adding that most of the

citizens who signed up for the notifi cations

heard about it by word of mouth. And many

of the counties in the state have done a good

job spreading the word about NY-Alert.

34 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER_2012

FLAWED DELIVERY?

Michalski said more than 100 vendors

are involved, including land line, cellular

and VoIP carriers. Assistant Director of

Technology Kevin Ross said you can’t

dictate to the carriers how you want to

use their infrastructure during an emer-

gency. “They need to know that you

respect their networks and that you know

what you’re talking about,” he said.

As part of e) orts to reach people who

have not signed up for NY-Alert, the OEM

plans to become part of FEMA’s Inte-

grated Public Alert and Warning System

(IPAWS). Through IPAWS, the o, ce

will send short alert messages to mobile

devices, even devices owned by those who

have not signed up to receive alerts.

The IPAWS program, the Commercial

Mobile Alerting System (CMAS), will send

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) through

the cell system and establish relationships

with many of the cell carriers in the U.S.,

including the major ones. The CMAS-WEA

initiative launched earlier this year, with

the National Weather Service being the fi rst

to start issuing alerts through the system.

In addition to mitigating the challenges

of convincing the public to sign up for alerts,

CMAS also helps overcome the challenge

of overloading telephone lines during an

emergency. “CMAS doesn’t send WEA

messages through a one-to-one connection

as land line and cellphone calls do. Instead,

the carriers broadcast the messages and

they’re picked up by WEA-enabled mobile

devices in the area,” said IPAWS Director

Antwane Johnson. “As a result, we’re placing

little strain on the carriers’ bandwidth.”

A process was unveiled this year for

local and state authorities to obtain power

to start using CMAS. They fi rst apply to

the IPAWS o, ce and then to their state.

Many of the vendors that provide telephone

alerting solutions to public safety organi-

zations are either adapting or planning to

adapt their solutions so their customers can

send alerts through IPAWS in addition to

using telephone calls, emails, text messages

EMERGENCYMGMT.COM 35

and other alerting tools. And the number

of mobile devices in the public’s hands that

are equipped to receive WEAs is growing.

Johnson admitted that CMAS doesn’t

solve all of the alerting challenges. It

provides short text messages to only mobile

devices — and only under certain conditions.

Johnson said CMAS is part of a compre-

hensive alerting system that the IPAWS

program is creating that will include

other alerting tools. Among them are the

Emergency Alert System, approaches

for alerting people with disabilities,

and Web-based alerts. “Even as IPAWS

grows,” Johnson said, “it will not replace

existing state and local alerting initia-

tives but rather enhance them.” k

Rick Wimberly is president of the consultancy

Galain Solutions Inc. rick.wimberly@galain

solutions.com