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Interestingly the University of Washington put out an email notice nearly an hour before AlertSeattle sent one. You'd think the city would make it a higher prio
by rococode 8y ago
Interestingly the University of Washington put out an email notice nearly an hour before AlertSeattle sent one. You'd think the city would make it a higher priority to let everyone know that 911 is down. Not sure if they did a text message earlier though, currently overseas w/o service.
https://i.imgur.com/2rlxi7f.png https://i.imgur.com/2rlxi7f.png
More info on the outage here: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/nationwide-centurylink-outage-affecting-911-calls-in-western-washington/281-1e461abb-8b3c-49e2-8a57-764e39466213 https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/nationwide-centuryl...
- icebraining 8y agoIt may just be that their email service is not particularly optimized for such an urgent case, and so only got to your email address one hour after the person sent the blast. I've seen CRMs take hours to push out a 40k email blast.
- MaulingMonkey 8y agoThere was a reverse 911 alert around here about the outage, loud alarm and everything.
- reaperducer 8y agoInterestingly the University of Washington put out an email notice nearly an hour before AlertSeattle sent one. You'd think the city would make it a higher priority to let everyone know that 911 is down. How long do you think it takes to send out a few million alerts versus sending a few thousand?
- wpietri 8y agoFor an emergency response system, I hope the answer is "about the same time". Or, more precisely, "within the allowed latency window for emergency alerts".
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lukeschlather 8y agoUW's email alert list probably tops 100k. They have like 70k students + staff and there are plenty of former students/staff and associated individuals who are on the lists. In any case it does seem like the tools that have been built for email marketing are a lot faster and maybe even more reliable than conventional text messaging.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoIsn't there an emergency alert system -- should take as long as sending a radio signal?
- reaperducer 8y agoEAS notification would have been virtually instant. But it's supposed to be used only for immediate life-and-death situations (tornadoes, nuclear war, chemical plant explosions). Amber/cell phone alerts have a lower threshold for pulling the trigger.
- roywiggins 8y agoI think Seattle eventually activated the local EAS over the radio during the 911 outage, my parents mentioned hearing it, though it was very scratchy and not very intelligible.
- gpm 8y ago> You'd think the city would make it a higher priority to let everyone know that 911 is down. Should it be? There is an argument that 911 serves as a deterrent and that it would be better if people (in particular, potential criminals, but we can't isolate that portion of the population) didn't find out it was down until it was working again.
- redler 8y agoSo 911 keeps "The Purge" at bay? I've never heard this argument.
- dragonwriter 8y agoIt's relatively well known that any situation that produces a predictable breakdown of police response is expired by opportunistic criminals (looting during disasters is perhaps the best known manifestation.) A publicized 911 outage would be an obvious opportunity.
- illumin8 8y agoI'm not sure this argument really holds up given the dispatch phone number for every police department in the country is still fully functional. Now, if you DDoSed all the local dispatch lines for every police station and sheriff's department in your county, that might be another story...
- nickpsecurity 8y agoMost people dont know it. At the least, 911 being down will add delay to the response. Those minutes might be all someone needs for a quick theft, esp cars or burglary focusing ln high-value items.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoIs that really an argument anyone would want to make?
- 8y ago