Too many Amber Alerts may be causing "notification fatigue". CBS News Texas looks at efforts to fix that.

Alice Claiborne was visiting her mother's house for the Fourth of July last year when she heard the screech.

"My phone was going off," she recalls.

It was sometime after one in the morning, and Clairborne was headed to bed after feeding her baby. So, in a move she'd later reconsider, she ignored the alert coming across her phone.

Deadly flood highlights alert confusion 

"The first two times, I just thought it was an Amber Alert," she said. "You get used to it. You get used to the sound."

Claiborne was along the Guadalupe River that night and, unknown to her, in the midst of what would become one of our country's deadliest flash flooding events.

The Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) sounding on her phone wasn't alerting her of an Amber Alert for a missing child; it was a warning from the National Weather Service.

"A FLASH FLOOD WARNING is in effect for this area until 4:15AM CDT. This is a dangerous and life threatening situation," it read.

By the time her family realized what was happening, though, it was too late to evacuate. The rising water had blocked off all paths out.

"We were trapped for a couple days, but we were okay. We were fine," she said.

Claiborne's family survived just out of the water's reach.

More than 100 others, many of them children at nearby Camp Mystic, died, and Claiborne has spent many hours since wondering what could have made a difference.

"Knowing that was an imminent weather danger versus thinking, maybe it's an Amber Alert, maybe it's just an annoying alarm that's going off, that would have, I think, changed some people's thoughts on what they did that night," she said.

Too many alerts? Texans tuning out  

CBS News Texas has reported on the impact of notification fatigue.

Amber Alerts are common in Texas, far more than in any other state. In 2024, the state had a record 54 Amber alerts.

That same year, the federal government tasked the research group RAND to look at the WEA system's ability to reach the American public.

The study found that states issuing the most Amber Alerts also had the people most likely to opt out of them and other emergency alerts, too.

And, Texas? It was at the top of the list with a 29.5% opt out rate.

Those who aren't opting out may still be tuning out, like Claiborne.

State Rep. Drew Darby sits on a select committee formed in response to the Central Texas floods.

"You heard story after story of folks who heard an alarm in the dead of night," he said. "They'd simply go back to sleep to their own peril."

Lawmakers revisit emergency alert system  

He filed a bill last year that would have formed a group to study statewide alert systems and the impact of notification fatigue. Despite overwhelming support in the Texas House, it didn't make it through the Senate.

This year, though, Darby hopes to try again.

"You hear all the bings and buzzers and beeps," he said. "You just have this overload if you will… We want the experts to take a look at it and come up with the recommendations."

In an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle, Claiborne suggested one possible solution, making the tone for an Amber Alert different from that of an immediate public threat.

"I do think they should be two different, distinct sounds," she said.

Former Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson, who helped create the Amber Alert in Arlington 30 years ago, has proposed renewing efforts to reserve it for only the most serious cases.

Another tactic used by some states is having more localized alerts that go out to people in the immediate area where a child went missing.

Data from the National Center for Missing and Endangered Children found most children featured in Amber Alerts are recovered within 50 miles of where they were last seen and often within just 10 miles.

Darby says he remains open to all ideas that keep people from tuning out when lives are in danger.

"It may be understandable, but I don't think it's acceptable," he said.