Sprint Nextel first national to test emergency alerts
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Jan 7th 2008 5:50PM
posted Jan 7th 2008 5:50PM
At first, we sorta thought those air raid sirens (you know, the ones that are freakin' loud enough to wake the dead) were enough of an "emergency alert" as it was, but consider this: they usually don't tell you the nature of the emergency or give you instructions on exactly how you're supposed to proceed. That's not the sirens' fault -- a mind-numbingly loud "whoop whoop" really doesn't have the bandwidth to reveal that kind of information to the human ear -- but now that SMS-capable phones are ubiquitous, it's time to smarten things up just a tad. The government's Emergency Alert System has had just such a plan in the works for a while now, and Sprint Nextel is becoming the first national carrier to trial a system capable of sending targeted, location based alerts when bad stuff goes down. The trial is taking place in scenic Contra Costa, California; no word on a national rollout, but if you find out about your next tornado, earthquake, or other scary sitch via text, your area have just gotten swept into the craze.
San Diego has a reverse 911 system and it was used during the 2007 wildfires. Came in quite handy as automated phone calls were sent out to people to notify them to evacuate as their areas came under evacuation orders. Of course, if you have a cell phone, you have to register it with the system in order to receive the automated calls.