As flood alerts lit up phones, did ‘warning fatigue’ set in?

By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Experts call it “warning fatigue,” and no one can be sure what role it might have played in a tragedy that killed at least 49 people when the remnants of Hurricane Ida swept through the northeast. Cellphones across New York and New Jersey pulsed with urgent warnings of catastrophic flooding as the storm’s fury approached upper New Jersey and New York City with torrential rains. A barrage of other alerts from a litany of apps lit up phone screens throughout the night — prompting some to wonder if people were just too inundated with warnings to take the threat seriously.