My first thought was that more people were able to contact 911 because of the new satellite feature
This reminds me when I was younger my family would bring walkie talkies to talk to each other when skiing. But they didn't work well or at all if you were on different mountains, in a valley, etc. It's a wonder we were able to not get lost lol
I thought that there was some sort of natural disaster in the town, resulting in POTS phones and normal cell service being out, but some Apple feature (meshing perhaps) enabling the automated alerts to get through.