Linn Co. Emergency Manager urges people to keep AMBER ALERT phone notifications, despite annoyance

CEDAR RAPIDS - People across Iowa got an early wake-up call Monday morning after the Department of Public Safety issued an AMBER ALERT. The alert was issued for two children, ages two and four, missing from Jefferson just after 3 a.m.

Police found the children safe at the Hotel Fort Des Moines in downtown Des Moines just a couple of hours later. Officers arrested the baby sitter, Allison Tucker, 21, without incident on a charge of child endangerment.

This is the second AMBER ALERT issued in Iowa in recent weeks and then quickly canceled. Many Eastern Iowans lost some sleep this time as the automatic wireless alerting system set off alarms in the early morning hours.

AMBER ALERT notifications can come through both weather radios and smartphones automatically unless you turn off the alert notices. But Mike Goldberg, director of Linn County Emergency Management, hopes people don't do that, even if annoyed at the early wake-up call this time.

'They are there for a reason and the reason is to alert the people of an extreme situation and we don't want people defeating that by turning off their technology,” Goldberg said.

One reason Goldberg hopes the wake-up call doesn't cause people to turn off alerts is it will complicate his job of warning the public about future events.

In the coming years, a lot of the county's alert system will flow through the wireless emergency alert system because fewer people have home phones.

The alerts cover four categories:

' Severe - Notifications related to weather, such as blizzards and tornadoes

' Extreme - Notifications related to imminent threats to safety of life not involving weather

' AMBER - Notifications related to child abductions

' Presidential - Notifications issued by the President

The Federal Communications Commission set up the wireless emergency alert system as a supplement to the existing Emergency Alert System for radio and television stations, according to its website.

Several Kirkwood Community College students said they almost shot out of bed when the alert went off for a problem in west-central Iowa. But they didn't consider it enough of a nuisance to consider shutting off the alerts.

'I guess I'd rather have them wake me because you'd never know when something would happen,” Kelsey Beatty said.

'I'd probably rather see it even though it had nothing to do with Cedar Rapids,” classmate Mandy Wiederin added.

Goldberg said while smartphone users can turn off all but a select number of alerts, there's no way to let in only the alerts that impact their immediate area. He said those who do disable notifications run the risk of missing out on warnings for nearby events.