Joe Wilson — president of Federal Signal’s Industrial Systems Division, Safety & Security Group — recently testified at a U.S. House of Representatives oversight hearing on ways federal lawmakers can effectively use taxpayer revenue to improve disaster preparedness. The hearing was held in response to recently introduced H.R. 2903 and H.R. 2904, reauthorization bills that would support two of FEMA's expiring programs through fiscal year 2013 and establish a clear framework for the modernization of FEMA’s public alerts and warning systems.

Along with Wilson, administrators from FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General, and state and local emergency managers served as witnesses at the hearing.

During the testimony, Wilson often referred to the results of his company’s recently completed 2011 Public Safety Survey, which found 90% of Americans feel that some form of improvement is needed to public emergency awareness communications where they live. The survey found that while sirens are the main alarm used by the nation’s fire departments or emergency operations managers to alert the community about a pending peril, the public prefers to be notified by television and landline telephones.

“We expected responses to be more modern than traditional,” Wilson said in an interview with FIRE CHIEF. “But along with sirens, they still want to hear about alerts through traditional mediums.”

Wilson said there are pros and cons to the traditional approach. First, not everyone has their TV on, and more often, citizens are TiVoing programs compared to watching them live. In addition, 60% of people no longer have landline phones “so calling someone on a landline telephone is not a viable option.”

In addition, the survey found that cell phones can be an excellent way to communicate to those in the affected area. But they also can be problematic. Sometimes they are turned off or not charged. In addition, only 66% of the U.S. owns a cell phone—meaning 44% would not receive an emergency notification.

Social media is another option to distribute mass emergency notifications, Wilson said. However, there often is a question about message authentication and the possibility of hoaxes. He said the public may not take messages seriously, while at the same time, emergency managers must take time during an event to scan the sites to ensure messages are vetted and the public has the right information.

As a result, Wilson said fire chiefs and emergency operation managers will have to use varied mediums to notify citizens. If they use sirens, he believes they should augment them with other tools to send additional layers of warning to the populace. This can included emergency alert system messages received via broadcast TV, text messages and social media—in concert with sirens.

The challenge is for fire chiefs to learn how all of these systems work, to have the technology to support multiple platforms and to have the funds to maintain such platforms, Wilson said.

“So their jobs have become much more complicated,” he added.

To pay for such platforms, Wilson pitched to Congress that FEMA should push interoperablility-grant monies to the local level. While the agency should be focused at developing best practices and administrating programs — such as the National Incident Management System — decision-making about how local communities use grant dollars should be made at the local level, especially when 34% of Americans feel public safety is not a priority in their community, he said.

“The folks on the ground at the local level — the fire chiefs — they understand what their community’s needs are, so that’s where the decisions should be made,” he said. “We would like to see grant-funding decision making done at the local level and that FEMA would allow for that to happen.”