...haven't set themselves up to get alerts from the city via email/text message, and yet still visit SE.

That would be me.

I didn't even know email alerts from the city were a thing.

If we did those here, they'd announce, like, crawfish eating competitions and shit, and the alerts would come three days late and spelled wrong.

I found out how to set them up about a year ago, after talking with my family about when we had to evacuate due to a fire in 2000 and wondering what 21st century notification options were around since people don't have landlines anymore. Unfortunately the site I found only lists where to sign up for Oregon areas, so I have no clue what you may have available.

My girlfriend is a marine biologist for the state Wildlife and Fisheries Dept. Her lab shares a building with "Law Enforcement", who are the guys who write you tickets for crimes like Fishing Without a Licence If Your Uncle Isn't the Mayor, or whatever. All those guys, in turn, have cousins (because everyone is everyone else's goddamned cousin around here) who are actual cop cops. So basically, we're pretty much in the loop on everything to one degree or another on most disasters.

If there's a hurricane coming everyone in the state knows about it two weeks ahead of time. 99% of people won't do anything about it other than buy rum, ice, and hurricane mix the day before it's supposed to hit, but we'll casually stock up on bottled water, batteries, and books for our Kindles, and make sure the cats haven't peed all over our stash of MREs, while we check the weather every day and speculat on how many days we'll get off work. As a government employee, my girlfriend will also have been given the opportunity to volunteer for some kind of important-sounding emergency contingency plan, but other than getting people to sign up no significant planning will be done and if shit really does hit the fan, the whole state will just hunker down and wait for the jackbooted thugs of the evil, tyrannical Federal Government to march in and save us so we can complain about them afterwards.

If Godzilla comes stomping out of the Gulf of Mexico, my girlfriend will most likely get a text message within 30 minutes -- not an official one of course: even if we did have an official Godzilla Response Plan, that shit would take like four hours, but in the meantime, some fisherman's friend's cousin's boyfriend will text their friend at WLF who will in turn text her. Within 31 minutes we'll both be speeding off to see Godzilla: her to poke him with a stick in a scientific manner, and me because, dude, it's Godzilla! And besides, it'll be several more hours before the cops get organized enough to kick out random dipshits like me who have no legitimate reason to be there.

If there's an ordinary fire, flood, riot type emergency, some cop will text his cousin in "Law Enforcement" about it, who will in turn text whatever Fisheries Biologist he has the hots for, who will in turn text everyone else in the lab, so we'll probably still know about it before the local "news media" who are probably off covering a fucking Okra Festival or something. Actually, scratch that, if it's a flood, EVERYONE fucking knows which levees are likely to collapse (hint: it's all of them!) the next time it rains two days in a row (hint: that's most of the year!) and the official plan for that seems to be "cross your fingers and hope it happens in the shitty neighborhood where all the black people live instead of the one by your house."

And if there's an actual immediate disaster, like an invasion of Russian paratroopers or a zombie outbreak, we're all fucked anyway since we can't even mount a half-assed response to disasters that are for all intents and purposes planned.

Although if it's zombies, I probably won't even notice. I'll just assume that the usual horde of drunken frat-boys shambling down the street at night are unusually subdued because LSU lost the game.

Maybe there's a system you can sign up for to be notified of things like email alert systems.

Yeah, but who do I fax my phone number to so they can call me to let me know where to send my address so they can put me on the mailing list where they send out instructions for how to sign up for the service that notifies you about email alert systems?

http://www.publicalerts.org/signup has the Portland-Vancouver area, where to sign up for notifications depending on the county you're in.

It's funny because it's Portland.

I recently watched the first episode of Portlandia. Seemed like an SNL skit that went on too long. I don't see how they could get multiple seasons out of this concept. Does it get better?

I lived in Portland for about 5 years and I think Portlandia is one of the funniest goddamned things I've ever seen. My girlfriend, who has a very similar sense of humor to mine but has never been to Portland, chuckled politely through the first couple episodes and had no interest in seeing any more. I've only seen the first season, but in my opinion, no, it doesn't get any better. And whether it's good enough I think depends a lot on how familiar you are with the area.

Personally, what I think is interesting is that when I lived in Portland (1998 - 2003) the city had no sense of humor about itself whatsoever -- they were too busy being Seattle's jealous younger brother to pay any real attention to themselves, even though Seattle was a washed-up rock star who'd moved back in with his parents by then. But the Portland of Portlandia, 10 years later, is exactly the one I knew. (It's really hard, by the way, to explain that a portrayal of something is both satirically hilarious and completely accurate at the same time, to someone who's never experienced the thing being both satirized and described. Imagine, if you will, trying to describe This is Spinal Tap to someone with no personal experience with 70s/early 80s rock bands or documentaries about them.)

I don't know if the real Portland is still like the one described in Portlandia, or if it's just a reflection of the memories of people who lived in a kind of cool, kind of ridiculous place 10 years ago before they grew up into the sorts of people who are able to make moderately successful TV shows, but they certainly managed to capture the essence of the Portland I once knew. And in the process, they made what is probably one of the very last of a long-dying breed, a truly local TV show.

I live in Portland now and I question whether the show makes any sense to people who don't live in Portland. I don't think it's the funniest show ever, but there are plenty of things that only seem to be funny to me because of direct experiences I've had in the city.

I think you hit it right on the head that it's both satirical and accurate at the same time, which probably only people who have lived here can truly appreciate. One thing I do really like is that they shoot all the stuff on location, and they make no effort to hide where it was shot. Most of the places are instantly recognizable.

BTW, this is kind of crazy but Fred Armisen actually lives in the same building as me, though I've only seen him in person a few times.

Who peed in the reservoir this time?

Apparently in three tests from different sampling sites two came back with poop and one with e.coli.

WTF ?! they consider dumping 38 millions gallons of already treated water because a guy peed in it ? this is more dilution than most of homeopathic "medicines" and as it's an open reservoir I am pretty sure birds already pooed in it everyday (those bastards)....

Luckily, they aren't dumping it. Unluckily, they're pumping the water into other reservoirs to give the appearance of dumping it.

They're dumping it, but refilling the reservoir with California's tears.

Please stop reminding me why I'm sad about my city.

Hey, your teeth might fall out, but at least your precious bodily fluids will remain pure and unsapped.

Fluoridation was a lost cause anyway what with Portland's rampant meth and artisanal dentistry.

A tanker lorry of toxic chemicals, used for water purification once arrived at a water treatment works in the UK. Without proper instruction, the driver connected the hose from the tanker to the wrong pipe, and dumped the lot straight into the drinking water supply. Much subsequent hilarity was had by all.

What the UK needs is more cameras.

Motherfuck. I was just here yesterday and drank tap water without boiling it...

try to boil yourself now. you know.... for safety reasons.

I'm not familiar with open-air reservoirs vis-a-vis how the water gets from there to your tap, but I would've thought it goes through some kind of mild filtration/treatment on the way. Is this not the case? Did they rely on dilution of anything that happened to fall in to prevent waterborne disease? I'm not suggesting some kid pissing in the water = flush the system by any means, I'm asking if there's anything that gives the water a final treating with something before it's consumed.

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/water/48904

How is my tap water treated?

--Bull Run water is not filtered.
--Chlorine is added to disinfect the water of any potential natural contaminants.
--Ammonia is added in a process called chloramination to ensure that water throughout the system meets federal and state drinking water regulations. Without ammonia the chlorine would evaporate by the end of the supply line.

So that's not enough to kill the E-Coli? I'm kind of amazed this isn't happening all the time, given that the reservoir is exposed to everything the outside world cares to toss into it.

Usually it is. That's the point of trying to figure out how the contamination happened, so they know what went wrong.

The water is definitely treated, which is why this doesn't happen very often and why the panic over the guy pissing in it was a joke. As far as I know they don't currently know how things got contaminated, but they're definitely looking everywhere.

I am a recent immigrant to this distant Land of Ports as you call it, so am in fact quite interested in said "alerts".

http://www.publicalerts.org/signup for the Portland/Vancouver area. Click on your county and it'll take you to the relevant page for that place.

Say, out of curiosity, did Portland ever get that free city-wide WiFi they were always talking about when I lived there and could barely afford ghetto-ass dialup?

Not that I've heard of.

Speaking of things that are fucked (read: us)

Did I miss a thing where the things weren't allowed anymore? Or ever?

Guh. I need to internet more. Hold on.

I'm having a hard time not imagining one of those fuckers armed with limpet mines or other similar ordinance.

with motion/heat sensors, GPS, and lasers!

Also, on the list of activities requiring boiled water, I don't see anything about bong use.

The alert is over, the water is now safe. Run your taps for a couple of minutes to flush out the old stuff.