The District’s emergency alert system was three hours behind in warning its users about the possibility of severe storms Thursday, and a top city official said she learned of the impending serious weather from the television news.
The National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm watch for the District at 3:10 p.m. Just before 6 p.m., area radar indicated a strong storm making its way into Washington; the same storm later produced a tornado in eastern PrinceGeorge’s and Anne Arundel counties. Severe thunderstorm warnings were issued for Fairfax County at 5:42 p.m.
But not until well after 6 p.m. did the District’s Emergency Management Agency deliver a text alert through its emergency system, a program that is expected to provide timely warnings of emergencies through cell phones, pagers and e-mail.
“National Weather reports a severe thunderstorm watch in effect until 10 p.m.,” read the warning, received at 6:19 p.m. “Doppler radar indicated numerous showers and thunderstorms reaching Washington D.C. toward 6 p.m.”
“The bare facts are that they waited too long and undermined the purpose of the alert system,” said D.C. Council Member Phil Mendelson.
Barbara Childs-Pair, EMA director, acknowledged a “glitch” in the system. The initial watch, she said, “did not tell us that the storms were going to be as severe as they were.” When warnings were issued, she said, the District never received notice from the National Weather Service.
“I was here working on some other things and looked at the television and noticed that a warning was showing,” Childs-Pair said. “That’s when we got the official notification. It was a glitch obviously that we were not made aware of it.”
Dave Manning, the National Weather Service warning coordinator out of Sterling, said the District received no warning because the storm crossing the city did not meet criteria for a severe storm.
“We still haven’t received any reports of severe weather in the District,” Manning said.
