Tornado: American Red Cross

Issues reported last June 2018 haven’t been answered, addressed or fixed! Severe weather had cost lives in our area and across the US the past few days and the Red Cross app doesn’t answer respond or r ad it’s reviews for their severe tornado app or notifications problem . I’ve already deleted it once as it sent a warning Versus a watch notification, doesn’t for off as amber alerts to when phones on silent and doesn’t have special loud siren alert and only uses devices default tone. I do Disaster Recovery & Response and registered w/ VOID and a CERT team leader so this is not a consistently relatable app. Gave it another chance a year later but to no avail.

I live in Fort Worth, Texas. We frequently have severe weather, usually Thunderstorms but occasionally there will be a tornado that could be life threatening. The trouble with most apps like this is that they go off so often you end up turning them off. We had a NOAA weather radio that went off so often that I finally threw it in the trash. With this well designed app you can easily customize the type of weather events you want to be notified about, how you want to be notified, and how near the weather event is before you are notified. We often get severe storm watches and warnings and tornado watches and I like to get silent, i.e. text notifications only, of these events. But when a tornado warning is issued within 25 miles of my home, I want the siren to sound immediately and loudly. That’s exactly what this app does. If you would like to be notified when an event is 44 or 144 miles away instead of only 25 you could specify that. It’s all up to you. You can even monitor multiple locations with separate settings for each one. For instance, you could set up separate locations for your home, your workplace, your partner’s workplace, and your child’s school. The siren has only sounded a few times in the last few years but I have been grateful to be alarmed and alerted each time it has.

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Red Cross/ 3 Sided Cube — I'm a beta tester for the Red Cross, and have been telling you this for YEARS: You MUST fix the ability to choose which number from within each Contacts listing is to be called when the "I'm Safe" button is clicked. As it is, the top number on the Contact list is the default — there is no way to select WHICH number for the app to text. Are users to go through their Contacts list and rearrange all the phone numbers to appease the app quirks? Certainly a landline auto-message asking for 25¢ to place a call is not very convenient when the ceiling has fallen in during a natural disaster. Also, what about an option to send an "I'm Safe" email vs. texting?Without these options, the apps are pretty much worthless and do not meet with your mission statement. Your agency was created to SUPPORT those affected by emergencies. These apps are falling short.

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I was disappointed to find that this app had removed all of my programmed locations and alerts some time in the recent past and I had no idea!! It didn’t notify me at all to review my settings. I only realized the issue because I was sitting with family and was the only one in the room who’s phone didn’t alert to a tornado warning! Usually I live alone and would have never known!! Only bright side I learned RC FINALLY put out a universal “alerts” app that does hurricanes tornadoes floods earthquakes and so on. Before I was stuck with like four separate apps so here’s hoping the new one doesn’t dump everything again. As for this app? It’s been tossed.

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I have had this app for several years. I have found it to be indispensable as protection from severe weather. With either the last upgrade or iOS upgrade earlier this month I began getting daily pop-up alerts on my phone saying the app had access to my location for three days and is that ok. Of course it is because that’s how it works right? I okayed it and the next day it was back and every day for a week. I finally fixed it by deleting the app. Now 2 weeks later the same thing happened today on my iPad and I have deleted that one also. Very sad as it was previously a “must have”.