Ana Marie Cox is an old lefty, but also a decent writer, and she writes about the TX hill country where she lives. She complains about the locals’ unwillingness to invest in alarm systems, similar to air raid warnings, to notify locals about frequent, disastrous floods.
What I don’t understand is why that would be necessary. Everybody these days has a cell phone, and the tech to send alerts via the cell network is used to send out so-called “Amber alerts” about abducted children. I’ve gotten several in recent years.
One memorable time the DrsC were sitting in a restaurant when every phone in the place harshly rang simultaneously. It was an Amber Alert. The tech works.
If I can imagine a way to pinpoint cell towers on a topo map of the region and send the alert to all phones within their broadcast radius, the tech folk can program it so the NWS can use it. The cost should not be excessive as the hardware already exists. It should be a matter of writing code.
