Obstacles hinder improvements to Wireless Emergency Alert system

AMBER Alert-style messages could include pictures, maps and more languages if changes are adopted.

On May 10, the Denver metro area’s most intense severe weather day in five years triggered a tornado threat impacting more than half a million people. It offered a refresher on the necessity – and limitations – of our nation’s most critical emergency alert system.

The National Weather Service in Boulder issued more tornado warnings on that day than it did in all of 2022. With each warning came an AMBER Alert-style message to phones, telling people to take shelter.

It’s a reality of the decade-old system - one that emergency managers in Colorado have come to expect, and have spent the last year arguing needs to change.

The Federal Communications Commission is now weighing such changes. The FCC cited 9NEWS’ reporting in a proposal for a slate of improvements to WEA. Those proposed improvements include creating the capability to send maps or images with alerts, translating messages in languages other than English and Spanish, allowing emergency managers and alert recipients to turn off the alert noise, improving the location accuracy of the alerts and developing a mechanism so emergency managers know where their message was received.

They are changes alert and warning experts say could dramatically improve the WEA system’s ability to reach the right people with the best information in life-threatening situations. They’re also things our phones are already doing for just about everything besides emergency communications.