Few people want to be woken up by their ringtone at 2 a.m., unless it is for something as important as an emergency alert. But, what if that alert is not an ‘emergency’?
Few people want to be woken up by a ringing phone at 2 a.m., unless it is for something as important as an emergency alert.
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And few may have realized that the dangerous heat walloping the Triangle this week would generate such an alert.
Subscribers to Wake County’s Ready Wake alert weather system received a notification shortly after 2 a.m. Friday alerting them of an “excessive heat watch." Darshan Patel, operations manager for Wake County Emergency Management, points out that individual users can control whether those alerts wake them -- whether they are delivered as a phone call, text, email or all three.
“When you sign up for the system, you can say, ‘I want to be notified of weather events,' and you can check tornadoes, severe weather, heat and all sorts of different options,” Patel tells WRAL. “If you've said phone calls, text messages, emails, all of those will come through.”
"We want to make sure that we can get to you as quickly as possible, so you can make the best decision for your family,” Patel says.
For those who prefer to not be alerted during certain hours of the day, Patel suggests using the system’s “Quiet Hours." That silences most alerts that come in during the overnight hours.
But Patel stressed that silencing alerts so you can sleep does not make the threat of this week's excessive heat any less.
When temperatures push past 100 degrees, Wake County EMS readies to help those who suffer the ill effects of the heat.
"Whether it's your daily person that's out in the elements for too long, whether it's a construction worker, whatever it may be. We definitely have an increase in call volume," said Greg Guillaume, operations commander at Wake EMS.
Alerts from the National Weather Service and the county help to ensure his team is ready to answer any and all emergencies.
"In extreme heat emergencies, we can either do IV fluid, we can start an IV and give cold fluid," Guillaume said. "Or if they have a temperature well above 104 degrees and we have to work fast and they're unconscious, we can do kind of like a cooling in a body bag."