SMS Fire Warnings

As I said the other day, the police get everything shoved their way that we can't deal with and I feel sorry for them. They are now responsible for sending out SMS messages on extreme fire danger days. Anyone who works with large networks, mobile networks and customers knows this is fraught with difficulty. Massing messages onto a mobile network could well clog it. Some networks are then very slow on delivery because we don't process mass messages quickly. Then networks are locked into grids and you cannot necessarily target the right people. So yes, some things went wrong. It has to be looked upon as a trial and people need to give feedback and not criticism. It is important that people realise it is not that easy. The police tried to contact 1.5 million people and I do believe people wanted to be warned. Now some are saying it is too frightening and too alarmist. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Some people didn't listen to the warnings put out by the CFS before because we have never had anything that extreme. What is going on is not normal. So we wanted warnings. The deduction is people need gentle but firm warning sand then they want to decide for themselves. That makes it very tricky. We are confused about this and we ought to be. It has been very scary and incredibly hard. We need to keep our heads straight and decide how the warnings should be phrased and then we shall have to accept some people will not be thankful. The problems will the networks are a separate issue to be addressed and it's good this was done...because now we can see we have more work to do to keep people safe. The police have been given this job. If we want it to be done properly then we need to give helpful feedback. I wouldn't want their job. Fire warnings are something we need.

This 774 Twitter feed is a good example of  how  we can use technology to keep ourselves and others informed.