By Holly the Assistant
Sarah has run off to obtain an appliance. So you get me for now.
An older friend lamented this morning in a non-local group chat that she’d missed a boil water order yesterday, but at least she feels fine. A younger friend asked how one even finds out about such things?
It’s a good question, with rather mixed answers, depending on your location, and no one real answer that works everywhere, and struck me as a good thing to bring up here, as obviously municipalities are failing to communicate to new residents how to find stuff out in their towns.
What I’ve learned so far: The HAMs find out about everything over their radios, someone else said local radio stations carry such alerts, so radio’s an option. Some folks still get daily papers. One has a local news blog that updates regularly to skim. There are text alert services in some areas. Someone said that the emergency sirens formerly used for tornadoes are now getting run for all weather events, which gets them ignored, unfortunately, but can be used to note to check the weather app or website. I get emails from the County, rely on Reverse 911 or a County Deputy showing up for Really Important Things (like GO NOW orders), and follow all the various interesting agencies and a couple local gossip groups on social media, and of course my neighbors talk. The hiking group wins the prize for fastest location and identification of any wildfire within eighty miles, interestingly enough. The neighbors get the prize for Large Predator Alerts.
How do you find out what’s going on? If there’s a wildfire, a SWAT situation, a flood, a tornado, or a cougar removing chicken coop roofs?
And since it’s Friday, and possibly your payday, here is your reminder that it is ATH Fundraising Season.
If you wish to donate: There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107
Thank you very much for your donations.
According To Hoyt 
c4c
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Reverse 911 is *supposed* to be the answer to such situations but when we had a boil water order in this area a couple months back, the calls were very slow going out. (Didn’t affect us since we are on a well but it did affect people around us.) Also a lot of city/county/locality governments seem to be going to Facebook or X as a secondary notification method.
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Around here the main way you find out about boil water notices is a sign posted in your neighborhood.
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Already donated. GiveSendGo was very convenient for that.
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Ahhh, I see. This is a second GSG for 2026 alone. I gave to the baseline one. Hmm.
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Locally?
Find out after the fact. Unfortunately.
OTOH haven’t been that near urgent notification required, yet. Close enough, but not NOW urgent. Somehow “boil water before use” should be one to not fail the NOW urgent alert.
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Something our building landlords also don’t seem to get, unfortunately.
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Anyone else getting frequent youtube ads for Talerico? I see and hear this guy and think What, ME worry?
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Ha! Hadn’t thought of that, but the resemblance is strong. I’d actually rather vote for Alfred E. Neuman. His policy positions are much more reasonable. (My own gut reaction to Talerico swings between laughter and suppressing the urge to vomit.)
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I mailed cash, as usual. Big Brother can’t track it. 😛
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My Texas phone number kept getting alerts for Kenner, Louisiana. A place I had left in 2004, and the phone from there dropped in 2007(? or so) and my Texas number never associated with the old pre-2004 address.
Locally, I might hear it on radio, but other than hearing the tornado sirens test, I will likely find out post event.
Now, after the Flint water debacle, the city came door to door and needed to physically see the water line entering the house, to ensure no galvanized pipes were in use. I had the little flag out for 2 years now, but mine looks to be copper at the street as well as to the house, so I’ll not need to worry about the yard being trashed.
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A notice in the bottom drawer of an obscure filing cabinet in the county courthouse basement? 😁
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BEWARE THE LEOPARD
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“Beware of Sleestak!”
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Watch out for stobor!
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Oh, the Vogonity!
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We use a variety, with mixed success. (Learned about a vary local attempted murder/perp-on-the-loose situation over the news, then got some updates from neighbors.)
We’re on the county emergency alert system. that depends on what the Sheriff’s Office considers “emergency”. May have been used in the past. That ties to a phone, and I need to check which one. I have one (of three in the houshold) that’s kept on, plus the landline usually works. (Got taken out one year by an arson fire along the highway 15 miles west of us. No fun for a 10 days.)
Weather? NOAA weather radio, with alerts turned on. Weather service website. The always-on cellphone now has a weather application that’s sort of useful.
At times, I have the ham radio using the alternate tuner to monitor FireCom. I need to program in the LEO frequency and set it to scan. Not sure if I can pick up the local state and federal fire people. It’s messy; we have BLM, USFS, plus Oregon Forestry handling some of the local NF responses. Not sure if they’re using digital/encrypted radio. That was supposed to be the trend back in 2008, but it didn’t happen for the city and town FDs.
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Oh, I forgot Flyover Alerts, a breaking news website. (Not its real name. Deal.) It does a bit better than what’s left of the local newspaper. OTOH, one of the Medford stations has good news, and they acknowledge things happening east of the Cascades. KDRV for the win.
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Working this issue while employed at the local County EMA, it is clear that there is NO One True Solution. The military adage of “10% always miss getting the word” applies.
Each method has failure points (some like cell and internet often have failure points that take both out for a given area). Both technical and human errors.
So I use a multi-source approach
Amateur Radio, especially for severe weather (it was a ham that first spotted the 2019 Memorial Day Tornado here and passed it to the National Weather Service, who then put out the warning).
I’m not into scanners myself, but enough local hams are, particularly retired Fire and LE, that anything from the scanners gets passed pretty quickly
NOAA Weather Radio
Local Over the Air TV. I have a TV in the basement next to my ham shack
Local broadcast radio, especially one News/Talk AM radio station. I have a dedicated radio in the basement, plus most of my ham gear is able to monitor them
Internet, particularly primary sources like the NWS local office website, SupercellWX for monitoring various local radars, local utility outage maps as well as local news organization and jurisdiction websites
I don’t do social media, so Facing and Twitting doesn’t help me
We have cell phone alerts from CodeRed from the County and our local jurisdiction. In addition I am set up with WeatherUSA to get texts with Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Warnings.
My jurisdiction has sirens, and I can usually hear them in the house, but they are NOT designed to alert people inside, especially when asleep. They are designed to let people outdoors that might be away from any other communication source know to take cover and check for information (one of my last projects before retiring was getting new sirens installed around the county)
So, that’s my list, more than anyone really wanted to know, but it seems to work for me. Lot’s of redundancy and what one doesn’t catch, something else usually does.
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Re scanners – they used to work great out here, but then the local LE got tired of the bad dudes listening in to tactical on chases and MERGE (local SWAT) deployments and they went to a trunked encrypted system, so no more easy answers to “Hey, why’s Air 2 circling over here?” anymore.
Local Fire Departments are still in the clear, though, and the online scanner sites are actually fairly useful for those, so even if all you have is your cell phone you can often figure out “Why am I hearing so many fire truck sirens all of a sudden?”
CalFire runs a pretty good web site on active wildfires, with regular map updates on perimeters and hot directions of the fire. The aviation side of that goes up through the FAA for airspace restrictions, which can add to situational awareness. The other side of wildfires is the smoke, and while it’s newer I like the looks of airnow.gov , in addition to the prior one I used when the smoke was really bad here a few years back, purpleair.com .
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Local new stations, NWS website, occasionally random alerts on the phone. For weather I tend to monitor the NWS website for my area. Otherwise? Two local news sites, and occasionally what of the city’s FB is available after a search-engine search.
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I’m completely oblivious. I don’t find out. I’m not sure what I would find out _about_.
Until just now, I’d never even heard of a “boil water notice”. Seriously? That happens in 21st century America? Egads. People need to be hung.
Other than tornados, weather is weather. I don’t need to be notified about it. What happens, happens. We do have tornado sirens, here. I don’t think they’ve ever sound “for realz”. There was a bad flood in 1973 (I think). That flood plain is now a (very nice) park. We’re not in an arroyo, so if it’s not raining, I don’t need to worry about flooding. Lots and lots of snow is possible, but it’s not as if I’m going to do anything about it. I’m fine with a three-foot surprise.
I suppose it might be nice to know if there is a bad guy loose in the neighborhood. I could answer the door with a gun. Or, you know, just live somewhere where that doesn’t happen. I’d be willing to bet it’s more likely that I die from a lightening strike while hot-tubbing than by some on-the-loose bad guy breaking into my house. In fact, I am betting on that.
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Water lines break, and when that happens water can get contaminated. Construction is a culprit; so are hurricanes uprooting trees. After Ivan in particular the Pensacola area had to issue widespread boil water notices because there were so many breaks in the lines, it was impossible to keep water pressure anywhere.
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A lot more than you would think. Unexpectedly severe weather with large amounts of rainfall can overwhelm the intakes, stir up unexpected sediment, and in general cause havoc. Accidents, earth shifts, unexpectedly cold weather, and just generally aging infrastructure can compromise water supply.
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EWEB/EPUD/SPUD all get their water directly from the McKenzie and Willamette tributaries, not wells. It is treated before storage and distribution. But one major highway accident causing dangerous spills could contaminate the system. Major wildfire. There was some noise during the 2020 Detroit (for Salem) and Holiday (Eugene/Springfield) fire regarding the potential for water supplies, quality, and safety due to contaminations. Nothing came of it. But 100% possible. Worse contaminated sources equals contaminated lines.
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Yes. We don’t seem to have many reasons for emergencies. With security cameras that catch bears (black), cougars, coyotes, eagles, bobcats, etc., that prowl for not only wildlife but feral and neighborhood cats, is interesting information. But this isn’t new. It is just being caught on camera. One expect the brazen raccoons, and possums, but the rest? Not so much. FWIW we are smack in the middle of the valley prairie rural, not forested Cascades or Coast Range foothills. Bears and cougars tend to been seen in the riparian Willamette river corridor neighborhoods.
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I guess I’m sort of foothills on the west side of the south end of the Willamette Valley. (East side is much higher down here.)
It’s been a couple years, but a security camera caught a black bear a block west of me, and a different camera caught a cougar a block south.
My cameras get the occasional cat, a bat once, and hummingbirds and bugs.
I have the Midland NOAA and emergency alert radio; so far, all it does is complain about bad reception on the Eugene NOAA channel about once a week.
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Yes, the valley is really narrow south down where you are. Not quite in both foothills, that would be Cottage Grove and points south. Valley is a lot wider in northern Eugene, pushing into Junction City. Then one realizes we are within blocks of working farmland (hay fields) and horse boarding arenas (Rodeo grounds for one).
River neighborhood where the bears and cougars have been caught on house cameras are about 1.5 miles east of us. Which is nothing. The south hills and other hill neighborhoods, where bear and cougar sighting are even less rare, are further away, but still shocking because actual incorporated city neighborhoods. One of which isn’t that far from downtown.
It is cool to see osprey and eagles soaring overhead, pretty much anywhere in the area. Nesting in the large trees or on special poles to keep them off the different utility poles, especially power lines. Does mean “keep small pets, on leash or inside.”
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There’s one route between $TINY_TOWN that doesn’t go through NF land, but it’s out of the way. Cougar live in the [redacted] River area, and bears in the NF/BLM land. People with property next to the Forest expect bears. Haven’t had any in our immediate area, but we’re about 2.5 miles away.
I bought the Midland NOAA radio to replace an ancient Radiuo Shack model, but it had to go back to Amazon. Seems the weather radio is on a hogback just east of Flyover Falls, and larger (and likely fairly conductive) mountains are in the way. It’s only 25 air miles, but rugged, and the signal doesn’t go through. Didn’t have the time nor energy to build the external antenna the Midland says it can take.
I think the Midland is great for flat lands, but not Intermountain West. Firecom can have even worse problems further north in the county. Volcanic rock and radio don’t play well together.
If I don’t need the alerts, my VHF ham radio can be tuned to the weather frequency. That’s got Good Enough reception. (In really lousy weather, the Radio Shack receiver is iffy. The ham rig is somewhat better.)
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Yes, on boiled water happening.
Local area had some trouble, and I found out about it when visiting a business in that area.
Surrounding incidents, it absolutely makes sense that there was a water supply problem also.
(North America has tornados and earthquakes, so lots of things that can quickly change. Then there are the hurricane areas.)
There was probably a delay between the contamination developing, and the contamination being discovered. There may have been a delay between discovery adn announcing it.
Anyway, if I price in a risk of towns being flattened, it feels like a more frequent chance of water supply problems are also priced in.
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I turned off my Amber Alert notifications on my cell when I was awakened at 2 am for an alert 125 miles away, last seen heading the other direction. Turned off my weather alerts when I got one for a tornado warning 65 miles away. We listen to terrestrial radio all day at work, so I hear warnings there. At home? Guess I’m gonna die. But the likelihood of a tornado at my location is negligible (base of the foothills west of Denver), and hailstorms don’t need to be announced. They’re just assumed between June and August. A boil order I guess I would read about on the internet news.
About 50 years ago, i *did* witness a tornado touch down, less than 1/3rd mile from where I now live. It was probably an EF0. No damage. Weird to watch, though.
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Tornado warnings locally, or rather reportings, are: “Neighbors hit with a tornado as the stood pointing. News at 5.” Actually, neighbors were pointing and saying “Is that a tornado?”
Willamette valley, and Oregon in general, has had > F0 tornados (F1 or F2, at most, enough to toss cars a bit, or break a tree or two), but in general the tornadoes are F0-, called Dust Devils.
Generally insignificant out in the fields, until one veers across the freeway into traffic. A bit concerning when travelers find their ’60s vintage car (i.e. not VW Bug light) in the next lane, sometimes even off the road, unexpectably. Caused a few accidents on I-5 when it is busy.
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Here in LA County, alerts are sent to your phone. Most people encounter it through the Amber Alert system (which warns of a nearby child kidnapping), but I also saw a fire warning (as it turned out, it was sent by mistake) get sent out a year and a half ago. A text message is sent to your phone, and your phone makes a very loud and distinctive noise that guarantees that you’ll pick up your phone if only to shut it off and make the noise stop.
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I use “Watch Duty” app for wildfires. I do not have alerts turned on. Use it to track wildfires. Don’t need notified for every wildfire in the west.
Exception when locally we are having fire (bug) problems. The one at Greenhill and Clearlake was “Wait! What?” Grass fire put out quickly. Not a lot between there and here. Though it would have to jump Hwy 99 and get through the industrial section before hitting neighborhoods to the west of us. When fires are jumping half a mile to a mile, jumping a 5 lane highway is insignificant. In fact, 2020, we were getting hot ash (no embers seen, but it does not take much) carried into the neighborhood on the wind. The fire was a good 30 miles direct flight away, across the freeway, and the Willamette river between the fire source and the neighborhood.
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And don’t forget the earthquake shakealerts – those are entertaining. And loud. At least they’ve got them refined so they don’t alert the entire state for something way off at the other end 600 miles away, but the “hold on!” alert I got last month for a 5.0 magnitude happening a two hour drive away (no way I’d feel that) was an unnecessarily adrenaline jolt.
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If you’re in a college town, the school will almost certainly have text alerts you can sign up for and a webpage you can visit. Here, the university’s safety alerts for things like crime and wildfires and weather cover the whole town, but something like a boil order for water likely wouldn’t. This is an unusually small town relative to the size of the school, though, so in a bigger town the coverage might not be so useful. (I need to sign up for the alerts again. Noped out when I left the university job for not wanting to hear from that place ever again, but it means I’m mostly flying blind in my own hometown. Somewhat embarrassingly, I only ever hear about those things from an online contact who lives in another state.)
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Federal regulations use turbidity (water opaqueness) as an easy to test shorthand for organic nasties in surface water, with a boil water advisory being triggered if turbidity in already treated surface water reaches a certain level.
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emails for “boil water”
The downside is emergency vehicles on the block and no notion why.
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Just today saw a Twitter thing where some fire department got ‘lots of smoke’ call at a residence; Someone Official got a drone over the spot and confirmed just BBQ, so emergency equipment dropped lights and sirens – but some still went on to be sure.
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AT one time we had a very sensitive fire alarm in the kitchen, which picked up on some smoking piece of crud in the bottom of the oven. It was part of a security package deal, so the alert went straight to the Fire Department.
I apologized to the very speedy responders, and gave them some of the banana bread that precipitated the event.
Said alarm has since been replaced in a different location.
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Egads…this reminds me of an incident in…what, February, maybe…where I went to let the cat out at about 6 am and opened the front door to see a couple of guys in full SWAT gear, rifles at low ready, jogging very purposefully down the street. Me’n the cat both noped back inside. Over the next hour and a half, I watched them park an APC in front of my driveway, block the street, roust at least 15 college-age folks out of neighboring backyards, handcuff or detain them in cop cars, and then release them one by one.
They cleared out right before I had to go to work, and it wasn’t until JUNE that I found out (from a neighbor who had recently found out from a friend) that it was the aftermath of some idiot and his friends beating up an ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, then hightailing it into my neighborhood. Cops suspected the perps were armed, so they went in hot. I tried…looked everywhere you’d normally expect to find info, talked to neighbors, but there was none to be found. (facepalm…you’d think there might’ve been some news or a public police report, but nothing)
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Nothing like it in the big city I live in, but a smaller contiguous one where I’m at a bunch has a monthly police blotter report they send out to their city email list, free sign ups etc., that seems to include every call.
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Anecdote:
Once upon a time we lived in an exurban development. Where technically it’s outside the city, but the houses are jammed in close together while surrounded by forest. Across the street was a guy we had never spoken to but casually mocked between ourselves for such behaviors as blow-drying his truck after washing. (No kidding. He washed it with hose and bucket, then broke out the leafblower and blow-dried the thing.) Naturally, blow-dried dude had a lawn that looked like a putting green. Our lawn….didn’t. (We mowed it when it got halfway to our knees, that’s all.)
One day a wildfire neared the house. The deputies went door-to-door telling about the evacuation level.
THEY SKIPPED OUR HOUSE. Vehicle in the drive, myself peering out the window. I went out and approached a deputy to ask what the hell went on, and was told of the approaching fire. I then asked the obvious question–“Why didn’t you knock at OUR door??” and got the answer “We didn’t think anyone was home.”
The column of smoke was unnervingly close, so rather than remonstrate with Beer-Belly Billy Bob I ran to evacuate.
But I remember. The part where we were considered disposable because the yard was shabby and the vehicle old and rusty.
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