Editorial: Pittsburgh’s emergency alerts should be improved

According to an Oct. 30 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, earlier this week, Councilman Corey O’Connor planned legislation to expand the city’s emergency notification system. Currently, the city releases emergency weather-related announcements on Facebook and Twitter.

O’Connor suggested using an expanded emergency alert system to inform citizens of Amber Alerts, bomb threats and traffic accidents that close roads or tunnels.

Most Pitt students are well-acquainted with emergency alerts after last semester’s bomb threats. Pitt’s Emergency Notification System alerts are available by text, phone call or email, and Pitt students can sign up for ENS messages on their my.pitt portals.

We applaud the city’s goal of reaching out to people. In the days before cell phones, emergency alert messages were sent over TV and radio. A lot of Pittsburghers are probably able to access these methods, but we support the city’s aims to create a multi-layered emergency contact system, especially one that will appeal to younger generations and students who heavily use Facebook and Twitter as a communication method.

While Pittsburgh’s emergency alert system has many benefits, it could be improved further through expansion to other media such as text messages and automated phone calls. In the event of a true emergency, people probably have greater access to basic texting and calling services than they do to Facebook and Twitter, especially for those without smartphones. Also, the elderly are unlikely to have access to social media, so automated phone calls might help them stay informed in emergency situations.

In addition, a downside of focusing emergency alerts toward social media is that people are only able to receive the alerts if they “like” Pittsburgh Emergency Management on Facebook or if they follow @PittsburghOEMHS on Twitter. As of Oct. 31, the Facebook page has 1,211 “likes,” and the Twitter account has 1,364 followers — small percentages of Pittsburgh’s population of approximately 307,000 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A wider-scale emergency alert system could have a higher level of participation because a larger group of people would be able to access it.

Also, we think that an expanded emergency alert system would be most effective and least invasive if it only included incidents that were of immediate, potentially life-threatening importance — such as severe-weather warnings. We think that people will be most likely to participate in signing up for emergency alerts if they feel they are getting real use out of them rather than simply receiving text spam about issues that don’t pose a real threat.

We appreciate the city’s gestures to keep the public informed of potential emergencies and to consider how our generation uses social media. However, the city should also expand its system to include people who do not have as much of an online presence.