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Yesterday’s false alarm in Hawaii had triggered a lot of hand wringing in Washington and state capitals about the abysmal status of our nation’s emergency alert systems which are a patchwork of old-fashioned sirens, TV and Radio alerts and cell-phone “push” messages similar to amber alerts. We have invested virtually nothing in upgrading our emergency preparedness since the end of the cold war. EY has been living with a constant threat of incoming missiles and air attack virtually since its creation. Is there anything the U.S. can learn from EY in terms of what works and what doesn’t. How do you balance too frequent alerts which turn out not to be true with having the population feel that they can safely “ignore” the alerts (aka “crying wolf too often”)? Are cellphones the best option for alerting the largest number of people as well as providing substantive guidance that a siren alone cannot provide? Do “kosher” phones relay the emergency text messages? It would seem that there is probably a lot of experience in EY which we really haven’t focused on here.
AFAIK, the system is Israel is not all that complicated. The first part is that there is a red alert siren wailing that is activated locally in the event of an incoming missile determined to hit populated areas (Ch”V). Each community has the information as to how many seconds/minutes they have from the time of the siren to the time they can get into safe rooms- the closer to Gaza, the shorter the time. There are sometimes reports of alerts that ended up being false alarms, but unfortunately certain communities have experienced enough real threats that they don’t ignore the sirens due to the occasional false alarm.
The second part is that the citizens know what to do and have home protection. The home front command gives out instructions in the event of a flare-up/war. Each citizen has a gas mask kit just in case, that is updated every few years. Each home is built with a protected reinforced room that can be hermetically sealed (MaMD room); older homes have a shared miklat/shelter for the building (something obviously lacking in the building code in the US). The government is in the process now of adding on protected rooms to older buildings that don’t have.
By the way, kosher phones- at least those in Israel- do not receive SMS texts, so that would not help.We have invested virtually nothing in upgrading our emergency preparedness since the end of the cold war.
The U.S.’s emergency preparedness in the cold war era was pretty silly. There were sheltering provisions for a small fraction of the population, but for most it was “duck and cover”.
the end of the cold war
What kind of war are we in now? Cold, warm, tepid? Whatever kind it is, it’s been going on since the early 90s.
But the situation in EY and the US are quite different- most of the US is out of missile range of its enemies, even if they would be stupid or crazy enough to shoot a missile. It would be impractical and unnecessary to implement the type of readiness that Israel has in the US.
The more serious threats of Iran or N Korea involve nuclear warheads- all the precautions and civil preparedness won’t help against those.
Growing up during the cold war, I can remember drills in school where we were told to hide under the desks with arms over heads. Yeah, that would have done the trick.
who remembers this:
“This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. In the event of a true emergency…”“This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This station, in voluntary cooperation with the FCC and other authorities, have developed this system to keep you informed in case of emergency. In the event this was an actual emergency, you would have been informed where to tune in for official news and information. This was only a test.”
Memorized during my childhood; not bad, considering I have not heard such a test in many, many, many, years.
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System
Back in those days, everyone had radios, with the EBS frequencies marked on them. As i recall, one of them was 640 KHz (AM). If there had been an announcement like the one in Hawaii, people would have quickly determined it to be a false alarm by tuning their radios to that frequency.
no one has explained why the shlemeil in Hawaii who pushed the wrong button to send out the false alert could not have typed in “false alarm” and blasted it out to the same distribution list used for the initial alarm.
There was probably no option for doing that.
IMO, the sirens + EBS radio stations are superior to the modern “high tech” approach.
“Seriously, though, no one has explained why the shlemeil in Hawaii who pushed the wrong button to send out the false alert could not have typed in “false alarm” and blasted it out to the same distribution list used for the initial alarm.”
That’s exactly what was done. A false alarm notification was blasted out to the same devices that got the original false alarm.
If it took 15 minutes you’d be kvetching why it didn’t take 10. If it took 10 minutes you’d be kvetching why it didn’t take 5 minutes.
When they blow the dumb air-raid siren in EY, you can’t even hear it, the kol torah in beis medrash drowns out the tzionim.
I have no idea if this is even relevant, didn’t read the thread, just getting back into gear.
It took 40 min because the governor (or whoever was responsible) forgot his password and could not get into the system. I kid you not- saw this on a different news site.
WinnieThePooh: “Each citizen has a gas mask kit just in case, that is updated every few years.”
BTW – The gas masks were all recalled a few years ago. Noone has them any more.
As for the siren system, as you mentioned earlier – they only sound if there is reason to believe that something will land in that area. There are times that Missiles are fires and no siren is sounded because with all the detection there is, they know that it’s not near a populataed area.
Reb Mutch – Eretz Yisroel
Wait…we still have our gas masks.
They were recalled?We still have them too. We actually had them replaced a few years ago- the home front command had a set-up in a neighborhood mall and you went with your old ones and got new ones. I can’t remember if we replaced them all or just upgraded the kids’s masks to larger sizes (the old ones were designed for babies). It can’t have been all that long ago, considering the age of my youngest.
BY the way Toi, I think you should pick other things to joke about. There is nothing dumb about an air raid siren to someone who has experienced them. It’s pretty frightening being woken up in the middle of the night by the loud wail, getting the sleeping kids into the safe room, and then waiting to hear the boom. And we live in an area that was not targeted, B”H, Kal V’chomer for those in areas where missiles actually fell.
“BY the way Toi, I think you should pick other things to joke about.”
Is this the right way to welcome back a member who was gone for so long?
Is it a proper “welcome me back gesture” to poke fun of what might be a traumatic experience for other people?
Bad manners are bad manners, whether done by old timers, new timers, or old-new timers. Just pointing it out so that all posters can learn to be more sensitive when commenting.
In any case, my comment was not meant to be personal- I don’t know Toi and was not around here in the old days- and I usually try to avoid getting “personal” with posters here.I was kidding, Winnie.
It’s hard to tell Joseph when you are kidding.
As you can tell, this is a sensitive topic for me…
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