In this episode of The Alerting Authority, hosts Jeannette Sutton and Eddie Bertola sit down with Steve Torrance, Director of Emergency Management for Marin County, California, to explore how one of the nation’s most complex communities handles emergency alerts and warnings.

Marin County faces a unique mix of risks — including earthquakes, wildfires, floods, tsunamis, power outages, and infrastructure failures — while also serving a constantly changing population of commuters, tourists, and vacation renters. Steve Torrance explains how his team approaches wireless emergency alerts (WEA), mass notification systems, and multi-channel alerting strategies to ensure critical information reaches people who may not live in the county — or even speak the same language.

A major focus of this conversation is Marin County’s real-world response to the December 2024 Northern California tsunami warning, where a countywide WEA was issued even though only a small portion of the area was at actual risk. Steve breaks down the challenges of public panic, geographic clarity, and rapid information sharing — and why local knowledge is irreplaceable when national alerts go out.

You’ll also hear about:

• The importance of the “first mile” before an alert is ever sent
• Training first responders and dispatchers to request effective alerts
• Why templates matter (and how Marin developed 90+ alert templates)
• Reaching older adults, tourists, and non-English speakers
• Using Nextdoor, social media, sirens, EAS, phone calls, and text alerts together
• The future of alerts: multilingual messaging, smart devices, and alerting beyond phones
• Why emergency alerting should become a standalone profession

This episode is essential listening for emergency managers, public information officers (PIOs), alerting authorities, public safety professionals, researchers, and policymakers looking to improve how alerts are written, approved, and delivered.

This episode is sponsored by HQE Systems, a disabled veteran-owned provider of cutting-edge alert origination software, mass notification systems, and outdoor warning solutions.

What happens when an emergency alert is sent without enough information—or with the wrong information altogether?

In this episode of The Alerting Authority, Jeannette Sutton and Eddie Bertola break down a real-world emergency alert involving a reported firearm and examine how incomplete messaging, vague locations, unclear protective actions, and inconsistent follow-up alerts can confuse the public and contribute to over-alerting and alert fatigue.

Drawing from peer-reviewed research and real alerting experience, the conversation explores what over-alerting actually means, how relevancy and content shape public response, why jargon like “shelter in place” can fail, and how poor messaging can overwhelm 911 centers while increasing fear rather than safety.

Listeners will learn practical, evidence-based strategies for writing clearer, more effective alerts—including what information must be included, how to structure messages, and why post-alert “all clear” notifications matter just as much as the initial warning.

This episode is essential listening for emergency managers, law enforcement, public safety officials, and anyone responsible for issuing alerts to their community.

Sponsored by HQE Systems, a disabled veteran-owned, full-service alert origination software provider specializing in cutting-edge life safety and mass notification solutions

Do Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) actually reach the people they are intended to warn? And what happens after the alert hits a phone? In this in-depth episode, emergency management practitioners, researchers, and alerting authorities come together to break down a landmark RAND Corporation study examining the real-world performance of the Wireless Emergency Alert system following the October 4, 2023 nationwide test.

Featuring insights from Rachel Steratore and Andy Parker of RAND, alongside hosts Jeannette Sutton and Eddie Bertola, this conversation dives into the often-overlooked “last mile” of public alerting—what happens between the cell tower and the person holding the phone. Unlike traditional text messages, WEA uses one-way broadcast technology, meaning there is no return signal to confirm whether an alert was received, noticed, or acted upon. That design choice improves speed and bandwidth efficiency, but it also creates a major data gap for emergency managers.

To address this gap, RAND conducted one of the largest public alerting surveys ever fielded in the United States—over 80,000 respondents nationwide, collected within hours of the live national test. The study reveals that approximately 91% of adults with working cell phones received the alert, demonstrating extraordinary reach. But it also surfaces critical disparities related to geography, device type, age, carrier differences, and opt-out behavior.

Key topics explored in this episode include:

• Why WEA performance cannot be measured through system logs alone
• Differences between broadcast alerts and SMS messaging
• Rural vs. urban receipt rates and why they matter
• Why Texas shows significantly higher WEA opt-out rates
• How phone design (Apple vs. Android) influences alert engagement
• The role of alert fatigue, relevance, trust, and timing
• Why a third of adults report never having heard of WEA before
• The policy and training implications for alerting authorities

The conversation also explores future research questions, including how to empirically measure over-alerting, warning fatigue, and public trust—and how emergency managers might adopt feedback mechanisms similar to citizen science models used in weather and earthquake monitoring.

If you are an alert originator, emergency manager, public safety official, researcher, or policymaker, this episode provides research-backed insights that can directly inform alerting strategies, public education efforts, and system design decisions.

🔗 Learn more about the RAND study and related research at: https://www.rand.org

🔗 This episode is proudly sponsored by HQE Systems: https://www.hqesystems.com