A weekend tornado caught the attention of people across Metro Vancouver, but the concern level for the weather event did not warrant an alert through the National Public Alerting System, according to the agency responsible for sending the alerts.
A tornado watch was issued Saturday night, with high winds uprooting and destroying trees in the UBC area of Vancouver, scattering debris, and downing trolley lines. It wasn’t until Monday that it was confirmed a tornado had, in fact, touched down.
Saturday’s tornado watch did not fit the criteria for an alert that interrupts radio and TV broadcasts through the Alert Ready system.
The system is said to be “designed to deliver critical and potentially life-saving alerts to Canadians through television, radio and other media and on wireless devices.” However, no such alert was issued Saturday night.
“For a tornado watch, it would not do a broadcast-intrusive alert,” said Meteorologist Bobby Sekhon with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
According to its website, Alert Ready would be activated in the event of a tornado warning, should conditions escalate to that level. That would trigger an alert that would interrupt radio and TV broadcasts.
“And for severe thunderstorm warnings, meeting a certain criteria of baseball sized hail, winds over 130 km/h, that kind of thing,” Sekhon added.
Environment Canada says winds during Saturday’s tornado were an estimated 90 to 110 km/h. The preliminary rating for Saturday’s tornado is EF0, which is the weakest on a scale of EF0 to EF5.
Sekhon says when a tornado watch was issued for the North Shore and Howe Sound, “it wasn’t looking entirely conclusive” the weather event was going to “imminently” affect lives and property.
“That’s why it was not put on to a tornado warning at that point. But certainly, we keep our eyes peeled for any conclusive radar signatures or any observations that we might see out there on social media or any reports that we get.”
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Sekhon says the Alert Ready system is “really for the most severe cases so as to not be doing too many of these broadcasts intrusive … really, when danger to life is imminent.”
No “broadcast-intrusive alert” was issued over the summer before or during the B.C. heat dome, in which hundreds of people died. The Alert Ready website does not list extreme heat as a weather event that warrants an alert.
Although Alert Ready is managed on a federal level, Emergency Management BC says the heat dome is a “stark reminder of the impacts of climate change and the need to prepare for hotter weather and more frequent heat events – as people, as a government and as a health system.”
It adds “we can’t ignore the potential for this to become more common in the future.”
List of scenarios covered under U.S. Emergency Alert System ‘runs the gamut’
In the U.S., the Emergency Alert System issues notices for things like extreme storms and other potentially dangerous situations.
Dillon Honcoop, former brand manager of KGMI-AM Bellingham, says the system was tested weekly on a local level and monthly at the state level.
“Since it’s a federal program [we had to] make sure that was all working, make sure that our gear was listening to the right frequencies, to be able to pick up an alert in the case that digital “communications — Internet services or even telecommunications, phone services were down –because that’s the kind of events that we were said to be prepared for,” he explained.
He says the system also includes things outside of weather.
“The list runs the gamut of potential doomsday scenarios … civil unrest … war time kinds of scenarios …let’s hope that never ever comes to pass, but that was in place for use in all of those kinds of scenarios.”
The system is taken very seriously, according to Honcoop, who remembers a time where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had designated the station as a hub for the region.
“They had designated us a keep-live site,” he said. “They had determined us to be a place where they would actually helicopter in a generator, should we be in that situation where power could be out for an extended amount of time beyond what our radio broadcast generator set up already could handle. So that’s how seriously they took it.”
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Honcoop says while the system hasn’t been used often, he remembers it being activated during a severe winter storm in 1996.
“I recall tuning into that station that I later managed — I was only 12 or 13 years old — and hearing that emergency alert come across. The broadcaster’s then following up with information all roads in Whatcom County are impassable and considered closed because of the severe snowstorm that we were going through.”
In addition to Alert Ready, Canada also has an Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) system, which the government says is designed to alert for “potentially harmful earthquakes, including for strong shaking from earthquakes outside Canada’s borders.”
EEW is designed to alert for potentially harmful earthquakes, including for strong shaking from earthquakes outside Canada’s borders.
Such a system may only give 15 to 20 seconds advance notice, but it could save lives. However, Honcoop says it couldn’t hurt to also lower the bar slightly as to what constitutes a weather-related alert.
“But there are many other things — this heat dome and other things like that — that can be seen further in advance. High wind warnings of a windstorm of incredibly devastating or dangerous proportions. Our forecasting, technology can tell us that hours or days in advance. That kind of information needs to be communicated to people in a concise and all encompassing way.”
Sekhon says the folks with Alert Ready are always looking at their criteria and trying to ensure “we’re doing appropriate level of warning for the public,” adding they try to avoid “warning fatigue.”
“If every warning is broadcast-intrusive, people might not take it as seriously,” he added.
Emergency Management B.C. says it is “actively examining the role Broadcast Intrusive alerting systems will play in notifying the public of other events beyond tsunamis, Amber Alerts and civil emergencies.”
“Given the number of British Columbians who have wireless devices, this evolution in alerting is the next logical step in emergency management to save lives and promote greater resilience in the face of disaster.”
With files from Claire Fenton
