SD Emergency 4+

Due to the Lilac Fire, this app has exploded in notifications... Unfortunately most are super unhelpful. It would be great if they could limited notifications to only truly emergency info.

Here are some of the notifications I've received:
"DA warns of price gouging"
"Looking for ways to help? Monetary donations recommended"

Why are these worthy of the terrifying notification sound? I don't want to turn off notifications in case there is actually helpful info, but they are encouraging me to by having all updates appear equally important by notifying me of all of them.

It would also be helpful to be able to change the notification sound to be something other than the smoke alarm chirp that's the default. When you are worried about fires, smoke alarm noises are super stressful.

The maps, shelter info, and volunteer info is super helpful. That part is top notch.

This app woke up our house in the middle of the night just now with an earthquake it claimed was 1 mile away but was actually 808 miles away, not even close to San Diego. It rated the distant earthquake as “weak” as it blasted our home with full-volume air-raid style alarms, red emergency screens, and a map showing us and the earthquake in literally different states. Then after a hot minute, it realized the earthquake is 808 away, not 1 mile away as it first assumed, and cancelled the alert.

The app clearly has a bug that incorrectly calculates the initial location and distance of an earthquake, causing it to report events that are (1) not close to us and (2) not even close to San Diego.

This isn’t the first time this has happened with this app; therefore, we’re deleting it. We don’t want to get woken by false alarms.

Great app! Despite several critics’ reviews below (dating as far back as 6 years), notifications can be personally tailored and are limited to providing helpful information during fires, dangerous heatwaves, and the like. It also is a one-stop repository for disaster preparedness—what to do in an earthquake, fire, tsunami, etc.—and provides up-to-the-minute instructions straight from the source regarding evacuation orders and routes, including maps. Highly recommend for anyone not wanting to wait for the news to learn of a potentially catastrophic event!