BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) We are often overloaded with information on radio and TV broadcasts, as well as social media about weather events or other items of importance.
But how many residents are actually getting those alerts?
Friday's blizzard is bringing new scrutiny to city messaging.
"It's something we need to take a look at," said North District Common Councilman Joe Golombek on WBEN Wednesday.
"We're trying to get more people to sign up for BUFFALERT text messages," a free service from the city of Buffalo. Residents can choose between email, text and voice alerts in any number of languages. But people have to initiate the service, by signing up.
On Friday, the same the blizzard struck, the city sent out two alerts.
city of Buffalo
Golombek acknowledges that compliance could be better.
"Last week we sent out messages that the city canceled garbage pickup on Friday, due to the high winds coming in with the storm. I noticed about a quarter of the people in my neighborhood put their garbage out." The message was also pushed out on social media as well as radio and TV.
Another problem may be apathy.
"Friends and family laughed at me when I went grocery shopping last Tuesday," said Golombek. "They pooh-poohed it, and said go get your toilet paper. I wasn't getting toilet paper. I was getting cans of soup," he added.
Golombek said there are many cynics out there.
"We kept getting warnings that this one was a generational storm. I wish there was help for the city of Buffalo earlier, knowing that it was going to be this type of storm. The problem is that we've had false alarms in the past. Storms are forecast to be terrible and then they don't end up hitting us or it's not as bad as we expected."
Alert systems vary from the emergency alert system, a national public warning system, set up by the federal government, to more regional alerts similar to those used in areas of the country that get tornadoes, or Amber Alerts that are used by law enforcement to notify the public about missing children.
"It's something that we need to take a look at. We'd have to see how we could do that legally-speaking," he added.
