Local News

Emergency Alert System Wakes Residents


Aug 12, 2015

Residents who had signed up for Okanogan County’s new emergency alert system were awakened early Wednesday morning with a weather alert.  The calls and text messages were hitting peoples phones around 3am alerting of a fire weather warning that began at noon Wednesday.

Maurice Goodall, Okanogan County’s Emergency Manager said he had heard from a lot of people Wednesday that felt like that information could have waited for a more reasonable time.  Goodall explained that alert came directly from NOAA.  It’s very similar to the Emergency Alert System used by broadcasters, with the alerts being sent directly from the National Weather Service.  The folks that were woken up Wednesday were those that had opted to receive the weather alerts when they signed up.

Goodall said, because those are alerts, you can log into your account in the system and set times when the alerts are not allowed to disturb you, like between 9pm and 6am for example.  Goodall said that works with alerts, if it was a real emergency, those times won’t matter.  He said, if it’s an emergency, you will always get notified regardless of the time of day or night.

To change your settings, log into your account on the county’s website at www.okanogadem.org. Once you have logged into your account, the column on the right side of the screen allows you to edit My Alert Subscriptions, click the edit link.  Then click on Weather and Hazard Alerts, there it will let you check the box that says “Do not contact me between:” This allows you to set the times when you do not wish to receive these messages. 

Goodall said, the system is working and you really do need something like this to work the bugs out.  He said, changing the setting will work for the alerts, but for emergencies, those times will not matter, they will come through no matter what.

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