>At least there would be a central location

It's called a website.

Whose website? Does my local city have one? Do they have the IT resources to ensure it is hosted? Do they know how to get a .gov domain? What about state news? Lot of friction and multiple potential locations vs a Federally run resource.

> Does my local city have one?

It's hard to answer this question without knowing your local city. My town of < 5000 people has the appropriate .gov site set up and maintained; it's one of the responsibilities of the local government. I'd imagine that any local government structure large enough to have evacuation plans in place is also large enough to have a website to communicate those plans on...

I live in about a 7,000 person town and they have a website as, I assume, most if not all of the towns in the state do. I don't know how good they are with emergency notifications on the site but then we don't have a lot of emergencies requiring notification.

Yes, all of this stuff had normalized processes before Twitter emerged from SXSW.