Pre-Dawn Wireless Emergency Alert Wakes Up NYC 382
New submitter SkiTee94 writes "Many people, perhaps millions, in and around NYC were loudly awoken shortly before 4am this morning by an activation of the Wireless Emergency Alert system. As the New York Times is reporting, the alert was related to an ongoing search for a missing child. Given that the alert asked people to look out for a 'Tan Lexus ES300' with NY Plate 'GEX1377,' many New Yorkers are questioning the logic of waking up the whole city to ask them to look for a car. Normally such alerts are reserved for road-side signs. While emergency authorities have yet to give a precise reason for why the decision was made to wake up the city, many have taken the step of deactivating these alerts to avoid future jolting mid-slumber alarms (likely not the intended result of last night's exercise)."
for some reason... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not just NYC (Score:3, Interesting)
You do know that weather alerts and amber alerts can be turned off, but not alerts sent out by the President of the United States [fcc.gov], right?
I don't know about you, comrade, but I sometimes wonder what's going on in this country.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Every 40 seconds in the United States, a child becomes missing or is abducted" [parents.com].
Let me know when sleep becomes more important to you than every single one of those childrens' lives, so I can laugh heartily at you.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm with you on spending money on healthcare of all kinds, but the AMBER stats I'm finding are nowhere like what you're claiming. They look pretty effective from http://www.statisticbrain.com/amber-alert-statistics/ [statisticbrain.com] and http://www.chp.ca.gov/amber/ [ca.gov] - do you have some sources for the stats and studies you're citing? It would be most helpful.
Re:Same thing in Boston when the Alerts went live. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Phone alerts (Score:5, Interesting)
When there is a tornado warning my phone alerts me 3 - 5 minutes before the sirens in the neighborhood go off. That 3 - 5 minutes can mean the difference between getting to the basement and living, being horribly injured as friends of mine in Joplin were, or being dead. I'll leave the feature on.
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean in places where you wouldn't get fired because you skipped work that day? and you wouldn't get arrested for interfering with the police? and the guy who found the child and walked him back to his parents wouldn't end up with his face plastered on TV with the caption "Child Molester?" for the next week?
Re:Did they find the Lexus? (Score:5, Interesting)