The worst way to test an emergency alert system is when everything is going perfect. You can’t really get anyone interested in testing an emergency system if the weather is 77 degrees and there’s not a cloud in the sky. People won’t so much as turn their heads to hear about alerts if there’s not been some sort of crisis in the past few months. The biblical character Noah could tell you as much. No one was really interested in the ark until the rains hit.
But when the rains hit. People get interested.
The Tiger Tech Conference in Crothersville, Indiana was such an instance. As far as numbers go, the testing was going markedly bad. School was out for summer; the June skies were crayola blue. No one wanted to hear about making schools more prepared for emergencies. At 1:30 in the afternoon, after countless raised eyebrows and “Mmm hmm’s” in response to being asked to test an emergency system, our team had managed to get five people to review the system.
Then lightning struck and the rain blew in sideways. A flatscreen t.v. hanging on the side of a vendor’s R.V. was more than likely ruined, and despite all of the novel technology, the fierce beauty of the monsoon-like rains stole the show.
Crothersville’s windows are sort of perfect for watching storms. The entire front hall is lined with dark tinted windows that make storms look breathtaking in an otherworldly, sea of Solaris, kind of way. I walked up to several of the conference goers who were watching the storm in awe and apprised them, in lieu of the storm from nowhere, of the emergency alert system, and they obligingly followed me back to the test room.
In the last two and a half hours of the event, there was a consistent line of conference goers waiting to test the emergency alert system. Pre-storm, from 10:00-1:30 we tested five people. Post-storm, 1:30-4:00, we tested over three times that number. People respond out of need. Unless you’re the type that can sell ice to an eskimo, it works best to see the need and work from there.
But I can’t really say that’s what we did in Crothersville. Our situation falls more into the Noah building the Ark realm. When the rains fell, people recognized their need. Unlike Noah, however, we were more than willing to open our doors.
