Background: Why Only Two Neighborhoods Received Mobile Alerts

BY Jill Byus Radke

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are text messages sent by state, local, or national agencies to mobile phones with warnings about severe weather, threats to safety, and Amber alerts.

There were ten WEA alerts sent by the Maui Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) on August 8, 2023.1 Only two of these went to Lahaina neighborhoods, however. 2

 

MEMA only targeted the areas highlighted in orange to receive WEA Evacuation Alerts on August 8 at 4:16 p.m. (upper left) and 8:46 p.m. (upper right) (PBS – WARN, n.d.)

Although the entire area of Lahaina was affected by the fires, smoke and evacuations on August 8, only the two areas highlighted above were designated to receive alerts via the WEA system.

  1. (Fire Safety Research Institute et al., 2024, pp. 244–246) ↩︎
  2. (ibid) ↩︎

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