Safety App Of The Week
June 29, 2015 No Comments
–Below is this week’s “Safety App of the Week“. Every Monday we publish an article that reviews and rates a new workplace safety app. Our testing is done on Apple iPads and Samsung Galaxy Tab 3s. We rate each app from ♥ to ♥♥♥♥♥ (♥♥♥♥♥ is the best). Prior app of the week articles are archived here.
Official Description
“Help keep your family safe in severe weather, man made/natural hazards with Emergency by the American Red Cross. Monitor conditions in your area or area of loved ones, prepare your family and your home, check to see if loved ones are safe and let them know you’re safe. A must have for anyone who live in areas prone to severe weather or have loved ones that do.
• Free and available in English with a Spanish-language toggle.
• Monitor the people and places you care about with real- time local alerts for severe weather and hazards, including earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, flood, tsunamis, winter storms, thunderstorms, extreme heat, wildfire and many more.
• Family Safe feature – easily connect with loved ones to share alerts for their area and see if they’re safe during
severe weather.
• Customizable alerting and push notification options.
• Interactive quizzes .
• Preloaded preparedness and critical emergency content providing instant access even without mobile connectivity.
• A toolkit with a flashlight, strobe light, and audible alarm.
• Map with open Red Cross shelters and other weather-related layers.
• Step by step directions on how to make a family emergency plan.“1
Thumbs Up
- cost is free
- easy to read, well illustrated
- you can adjust the alert radius
- separate alerts for – 3 man-made emergencies, and 13 natural disasters
- quizes test your emergency preparedness
- can track the safety of family members
- we love the “1st aid tool kit”
- to call 911, just tap the app
- available in English or Spanish
Thumbs Down
- can not delete old warning alerts
- very few shelters are shown on the shelter map (it shows no shelters in the entire state of Wisconsin)
- requires an Internet connection (or WiFi)
- alerts are very loud (an alert went off while I was on an airplane – it freaked out the other passengers)
Overall Rating
- iPad / iPhone – ♥♥♥♥♥
- Android – ♥♥♥ (problems with empty and/or buggy emergency alerts)
- Overall – an all-in-one emergency alert app that works great on iPads/iPhones, but has some problems on Android devices