FEMA Reviews

So the freeze warning was extended, or maybe some other fairly normal weather event gets reported, and the weather alert notification dings and wakes us at all times of the night. I like to keep the sound on for notification in case there is some real extreme weather developing, but I really don’t care to be advised that a freeze advisory has been extended at 2:15 am.

I should be allowed to define what types of weather I consider critical or minor, and the notification with sound should only be used for what I define as critical events. A farmer may have different needs than a taxi driver or a builder or a writer of suspense novels, just to name a few.

95% of all the alerts are for things I either know about (I looked at the forecast, I can hear the thunder or the heavy rain, etc), or have a reasonable expectation will not affect me much (flash flooding typically doesn’t affect the places I go, beyond the fact that visibly heavy rain creates conditions for hydroplaning).

I wish there were a way to test the audio alert to make sure that I know what it sounds like and that it is in fact working and coming through the speakers. I have FEMA set up on an iPad in the living room and hopes that being centrally located we would be notified of any of the alerts that we have it set to.

There are plenty of weather alert apps but I chose this one in hopes that other emergencies will be broadcast as well. I actually wanted some kind of emergency broadcast system app but none seems to be available. So I’m hoping FEMA also alerts to other kinds of emergencies besides acts of you know who. Such as National alerts due to terrorism and the like. There is a local alerts setting (last button) but that is very broad, it would be nice to know those other types of alerts will be broadcast.

11/18 I decided to try one last thing for completely deleting FEMA. I updated to current version (2.11.3). All my previously saved locations were back. We’ll see how it works going forward, but I am hopeful. Thanks for the fix.
11/6 While I used to receive multiple alerts for the same issue, the recent update broke FEMA and wiped all settings and saved locations. Most well-designed apps have the ability to retain config settings during an update. What is strange is that I continue to get alert notifications for my saved locations, even though I cannot view the alerts or see (or re-add) my locations. So perhaps they’re not cleared after all, just somehow inaccessible. Seems like a fundamental flaw in the update. I will wait for an update rather than delete and reinstall. Thankfully fire season is nearly behind us in CA.

The information is there, so that’s good, but generally FEMA is a little clumsy and doesn’t have the most intuitive UI.
A couple of things I’d like to see the developer address please:
1. Notifications: if my App has a red number “badge” meaning there’s a (quantity of) new notification(s) in FEMA , this should be intuitive to find, and reflect the number.
My expectation: red badge “2” = open app and see 2 new alerts.
If an alert has expired and is no longer there, it shouldn’t be in the badge alert count. Thank you.
2. Request: it would be really useful to have a “share” button on the alerts. E.g. We run a small family rural Ag business and I try to share occasional frost Alerts with our customers (like a sudden frost after a warm spell or first frost of the season). “Share” would be great.
I especially want to always share “do not burn” alerts on business Facebook page. Currently I take a screen shot, but the alert is usually longer than one screenshot.
Thank you for reading and I hope these changes are possible.

Hello developers - I am a meteorologist and had been recommending FEMA to all of my friends for robust and reliable weather alerting. Everything about it was great. Within the last couple of months, I stopped getting alerts. I asked around, and several friends are having the same issue. We are all on various newer iPhones. I tried turning notifications on and off, alerts worked once, then quit again. I tried deleting and resetting my location, got one set of alerts, and it quit again. The alerts are there if I open FEMA , but no notifications are received. I am now deleting and reinstalling FEMA , to see if that helps, but I’m nervous about having recommended this to so many people.

Love FEMA , very happy to have discovered it.

But what happens if someone presses the "Call 9-1-1" button? It has an icon suggesting it is a menu option leading to another page, but it's also a different color than all the others. Does pushing that menu item immediately dial 911, and if so, why? I can't think of a situation that I would opt to do this in FEMA instead of dialing 911 or asking Siri

Please consider moving, or removing, the 911 button. It is right next to the settings button. Other than that FEMA is fantastic

I downloaded a similar app a year or so ago (Red Cross - Emergency) thinking it would be perfect to monitor weather conditions etc. for people who don’t listen to the radio or have a television service. It turned out to be no good at all (maybe they’ve fixed it) and I deleted it immediately. It wouldn’t register tornadoes that were happening in my town, or anything else for that matter.

Sitting on my porch today I heard a neighbor’s radio broadcast an emergency message. I looked on FEMA Store, downloaded the this app app, and entered my location. Not even a second after I hit save, FEMA gave me three warnings in my area that had just been posted minutes before. The information was clear and understandable, and in real time.

Thanks this app (and the developers), you got it right with FEMA.

I gave 4-stars instead of 5, as I think it would be nice to have a map feature showing affected areas. It does however give detailed descriptions of the affected areas, but others might prefer a map.

I like the idea of getting alerts for emergencies, such as evacuations and the like, but I don’t need a “winter weather” or “red flag” warning notification for my selected location (every day, this time of year) plus three other counties surrounding. Especially when I have purposefully un-selected these minor notifications. It’s also frustrating that I see the notification badge, but when I open FEMA I have no idea which notifications are new and which were existing. I’m going to look for another app that will give me the emergency notifications and then get rid of this one.

Since this latest update three days ago I’m not getting the alerts on my phone, it’s showing I have 2 new alerts but it’s only giving me an option to add or delete a new location and none of that works, it’s showing it was updated for the iPhone X? I can’t even edit or add a location, have deleted and reinstalled FEMA three times. Before the update I would have given it 5 stars. I see now that it’s for iPhones 9 or later, why is that? I have a 7 and I’ve always gotten the alerts but now I don’t get them!

I’ve recently downloaded FEMA and am missing many alerts because I feel I am constantly having to put in my location information every couple days. I have seen where there was a “bug fix” on this, but I am not seeing the fix. Developers? Anybody listening?

I put in my location yesterday AGAIN, and then had to do it again this morning.

Absolutely everyone should have this installed and configured to their county. You can customize the notifications you receive. I personally have all alerts turned on. There is also the ability to share photos of disaster damage. These photos are critical and valuable to emergency management and the National Weather Service. I wish the capability were added to send you alerts based on your GPS location in the event you are traveling.

I had to turn off alerts, which is the biggest point of FEMA , because it harasses me with frequent repeats of the same alerts over and over and over every few minutes, eg when a thunderstorm is in a town miles away and heading farther away. Tried to put up with it for a long time but finally couldnt take it any more. Im assuming there was some slight difference in the notices, but im not going to read them all. Im sure no one will. FEMA or server should recognize that it already sent essentially the same message. This is the kind of thing computers do so easily, filter out duplicate data. But this just lazily passes it on.

I love FEMA, it's fantastic for receiving weather alerts. And yes, sometimes the alerts are a little overzealous (I really don't need "dense fog" alerts every morning. It's fall. It happens.) But that's not really that big of an issue. The biggest issue is when I have to put in my locations every few weeks. I don't even update FEMA , it just decides every couple weeks to delete the locations I've put in a dozen times before!

I’ve received a few alerts and it seems to work well. I especially like how there’s also additional resources on what to do in cases of emergencies.
There is one thing i would suggest, to be able to look at past alerts, when I saw the ones i got they disappeared after viewing them twice. Might have been the warning ending though

I find FEMA to be very important and useful, but I feel like the notification sound should be unique and more similar to the WEA sound I would get on my iPhone. At the moment it is simply to quiet and easy to ignore because it sounds like all the other push notifications I would get. Even the Red Cross app has its own sound and I think this is something you should consider.
Thanks

Even after the most recent update I am still just getting alerts and then nothing shows in FEMA at all. Very frustrating because this is the only app that steadily was reliable for years and now it isn’t :(

EDIT: after the most recent update, all of my issues mentioned above have been resolved and FEMA works great!

Not only does this ap send notifications ALL the time that are mostly useless, it also loses your set location most of the time.
Almost every time I open the ap it makes me enter my location again. Which doesn't seem very helpful if ever there were an actual emergency situation. Also, the locations it allows you to choose from are so general and cover a large area I get notifications for winter advisories happening in the mountain 50miles away!
Worst emergency ap ever!

My wife and I installed FEMA on our phones so that we could get overnight alerts in the event of a tornado watch or warning. FEMA fails to give alerts! We only get alerts when we open FEMA . We’ve double- and triple-checked our notification settings in FEMA and in our phones’ general settings, and everything should be working fine. But it’s not.

This is a critical feature of FEMA. And the Washington Post’s Capitol Weather Gang frequently recommends installing FEMA to get overnight weather alerts. But clearly FEMA isn’t a reliable failsafe.

There is a bad storm in the area, and every 4 mins or so FEMA is sending push notifications. No updated information. Time window for severe weather warnings is unchanged. Just constant zombie notifications. I want to be notified of an imminent tornado, not that the flood watch is still in effect for the next 6 hours just like it was 4 minutes ago and 4 minutes prior to that...

The old location issues seem fixed. I wish the notifications could be less verbose, main details only: Tornado Watch until 8pm, Thunderstorm, etc. then if you want more detail that could appear in app. Especially true for Apple Watch notifications.

I am a retired Firefighter/EMT/CERT I/C. I really like the Apps 'Reminders.' If one Life is Saved by using the Reminders, its 'Job well done.'
I believe the bug that caused some users to re-enter their location information has been fixed. In the nine months I have used FEMA, I have not had any problems.
Keep up the good work this app.

FEMA used to be (mostly) fine, I would have to re-enter locations occasionally, maybe once a month. Now it’s doing it nearly every time I get a notification and open FEMA . Then when you enter the location, it doesn’t show the alert because it was previously issued. Really, really annoying. From reading reviews here, I’m definitely not the only one with this problem.

FEMA often has useful alerts but a big issue for me is FEMA icon will have that little number showing there is a message or alert, but when I open FEMA , it is nowhere to be found. Or I have to open each city to find it. Wish when the red number flag pops up, it would open right to that message. So I tend to ignore them which is not helping me.