Esplanade briefly told to evacuate as thunderstorms approached; people nowhere near the Pops got the message, too
People with phones set up for emergency messages were warned this afternoon to leave the Esplanade as a line of thunderstorms approached south of Boston. State Police stopped letting people onto the Esplanade to reduce the number of people they might have to move out in a hurry had the heavy rain and lightning reached the Charles, which it didn't.
FC was sitting at home in Somerville when the phone blared:
I'm sitting on my couch at home.
Others, also nowhere near the Hatch Shell, got more specific messages that referred to the Pops.
Mem_Somerville reports:
My housemate got it, but I didn't. We are in the same location, but technically he's upstairs, so maybe he's closer to lightning....
But also not at the Esplanade.
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We got the message about the Pops here in Brighton (near the BC end of green line B), and I thought that maybe it was going to every phone in Boston.
MEMA alert for greater Boston
I think everyone was just being extra cautious based on whatever happened several years ago that made people take cover in the sterile, drive tunnels.
Voice recognition?
@MassMouse - am I correct in guessing you mean "Storrow Drive" and voice recognition didn't recognize?
HA!
Cynical me thought MM was being snarky about how dirty the Storrow tunnels are, which I enjoyed. But the voice recog explanation is also good. UHUB never disappoints.
Speech recognition
Your dog mostly does voice recognition, your spouse mostly speech recognition.
Nah man...
...she ignores me completely.
BAA HAA HA
I did mean Storrow Drive - that was precious!!
South Boston
Andrew Square included in the evacuation information. Took shelter in Dunks.
I got three of them
In my house painting my toenails, scared the crap out of me .
I read the header, evacuate BOSTON.. :0
The British were back to
The British were back to finish the job...
Which one - losing or
Which one - losing or surrendering?
Emergency Confusion
I'm miles away from the concert, sitting in my living room… and I got the alert on each my phones (iPhone and Android), and the Android phone started making a loud alarm sound. I didn't even remember I had signed up for that, didn't understand the message (especially because POPS was all caps and I had no idea what MSP stood for). So I thought maybe a tornado, or huge fire, or World War III.
So I called 911 to ask, and she probably thought I was an idiot, but she was very nice about it and quickly explained what it was. Whew!
I knew what POPS was, despite the weird capitalization, but
I had no idea what a PI was, and whether I might be one. Private Individual? Person of Interest?
Someone on fedi explained to me that it was "Pls", not "PIs" -- as in "please". -.-
MSP?
I had no idea what that was and wondered why I would be getting an alert for the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.
Was at a holiday bbq…
…in Revere and about 12 phones including mine went off at once with the alert
World class.
World class.
It could have been worse...
It could have been something like
Magoo sez
Magoo was so startled by the alert that Magoo said “Yeeeeeowozerswhatsthat?!?!” really really loud. Magoo.