On July 30, 2025, the Earth shook off of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula with a massive 8.8 earthquake. Tsunami alerts rippled out across the Pacific, triggering evacuation orders in multiple countries. Some 2 million people were told to evacuate around the area. Hours later, the warnings were canceled — and no destructive waves had materialized.
The event may have felt like yet another “false alarm,” but it underscored a different hazard: The danger of people becoming desensitized to critical warnings, including if nothing comes of them.
The Alert Fatigue Dilemma
Life is saturated with alarms and notifications. Especially on our phones. They’re buzzing with weather alerts, company reminders, news flashes. The sheer volume of signals that we receive daily means employees often stop paying attention. That’s a problem when true emergencies happen.
The state of Texas offers a cautionary tale. Residents there receive more Amber Alerts than anywhere else in the U.S., accounting for nearly one-third of the total alerts across the country. As a result, some people silence all notifications on their devices. But doing so can lead to dire consequences. For instance, during recent flash floods in the Hill Country region of the state, urgent life-saving alerts may have been ignored because they had become too much of a distraction. Emergency alert push notifications on phones might have blended into the background noise of other far less important messages, or simply not displayed because some had been switched off by people unaware of their importance.
The same scenario can play out in the workplace. If staff are flooded with minor reminders or nonessential updates, they may not recognize — or act on — the one message that really matters.
What Can Be Done?
In any facility, especially medical facilities, alerts should serve a clear purpose to protect life and maintain operational safety. So, in order to that ensure emergency communications cut through the noise and are received, focus on smarter — not louder — alerts:
If workers are conditioned to ignore alarms, a life-threatening event may not get the response it needs. In today’s notification-heavy world, effective communication isn’t just about being heard, it’s about ensuring that when your alert sounds, people trust it enough to act — without hesitation.
