LA's First Emergency Weather Alert Warned Nearly 3 Million Via Phone
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — If you have a smartphone and live in Los Angeles County, you probably heard the warning.
Early Friday, hundreds of thousands of people were awakened to a series of blaring tones, marking the first time in L.A. people received this type of weather alert.
And as annoying as it might sound, the National Weather Service says it saves lives.
"We are warning people to go to high ground during a flash flood, or if there's debris flow to stay in their house and take shelter until it's over," said Eric Boldt, with the National Weather Service.
For most, the alarm hit around 2 a.m., along with a text message reading: "Flash flood warning."
Boldt says the warning gets sent from the National Weather Service office in Oxnard to FEMA, which is then processed into a short message before it's sent to cellphone carriers, which send the information to cellphone towers in the area of danger.
"Since we haven't had a lot of storms in the past, this is the first time we issued a flash-flood warning to a large part in the metro area," Boldt said.
Of course, there is an option to turn the notification off, just like when an Amber Alert comes through.
Simply go to your settings, then to notification center.
But Boldt doesn't recommend doing so.
"This is a nice tool that we can reach many people that we couldn't reach before," he said.
It's estimated as many as 3 million people received Friday morning's alert.
