CHARBONNEAU – A surefire way to make sure emergency alerts are heard

 WITH SO MUCH competition for our attention on social media, how do emergency alerts get through?  I have a suggestion, below.

Kamloopsians in the eastern part of the city blissfully drained the reservoir dry, unaware that once the water was gone it would be days until it would restored; unaware that once the water lines were no longer pressurized, dirt and crud would be sucked into the lines making the water unpotable once water was restored — even when boiled.

They didn’t know that a water valve had broken and that they should be conserving water.

Without a warning, they carried on as usual — watering lawns, washing cars, and rinsing driveways. Eighty per cent of summer water consumption in Kamloops goes directly toward those uses.

It didn’t take long to drain the reservoir. Kamloops has the greatest per capita water use in the province, nearly twice the provincial average.

Who is to blame for leaving 19,000 Kamloopsians without water? Why weren’t they told of the dire situation?

City officials blamed residents who ignored water restrictions. Reservoirs could not be replenished, they said, because too many people refused to stop watering their lawns.

At a council meeting, civic operations director Jen Fretz said the City “put out some messaging” on the previous day encouraging water conservation but people didn’t get the message.

“Unfortunately, we were literally out this morning turning people’s irrigation off,” she said.

“Who did they tell? Because they certainly didn’t tell any of us,” Pamela Deo told Castanet News, “None of my neighbours knew.”

It wasn’t a lack of trying. The City used social media, mainstream media, even road signs to warn of the water valve break.  They also used the mass notification system called Voyent Alert.

It’s not like Kamloopsians aren’t looking at their phones. We spend an average of three hours a day messaging, browsing social media and YouTube, shopping and streaming.

Phones have surpassed TV as a source of news.  Two thirds of Canadians get “news” online.

Viewers don’t actually go to the source of the news. They follow  links to news on social media that are posted by someone else, someone who is part of a Facebook group or an influencer on TikTok or Instagram.

The links are originally posted by mainstream media, that is, sources that pay journalists to dig up the news. They post articles for free in hopes that viewers will subscribe to their site.

This means that if mainstream media don’t post a link, or someone doesn’t repost it on social media, it doesn’t get through.

All this makes the delivery of alerts uncertain.

I have a surefire way to cut through the filters.

While visiting a small town in Mexico, trucks and cars would drive by with loudspeakers mounted on them. They would blast announcements of upcoming events, blare the sale of mattresses, furniture and seafood.

In the event of another emergency, Kamloops should do the same. Nothing gets your attention like a bullhorn.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.