Cause for alarm. Obviously, the Amber Alert system didn’t work well this week for missing siblings Dylan, 9, and Shasta Groene, 8.

With the two missing from the scene of a triple homicide at Wolf Lodge Bay, state law enforcement agencies in Idaho and Washington fiddled over criteria for an Amber Alert. For 90 minutes, or about the time it takes to drive across the Idaho Panhandle, Idaho State Police resisted issuing the alert because criteria hadn’t been met: No information was available about a possible abductor, a getaway vehicle or an escape route. Also, there was as much as a day lag between the children’s disappearance and discovery of the slain bodies of their mother, an older brother and a family friend.

Washington used the same excuses to balk.

The murders and possible abductions exposed a flaw in the system that alerts the public to be looking for abducted children – a flaw that needs to be corrected immediately. It can be remedied by adding a criterion: When a child or children are missing from a homicide scene, use common sense and issue an alert.

Some fires to put out. After cutting the Spokane Fire Department by 52 positions in a budget-balancing move last year, city officials encountered a couple of surprises. Absenteeism due to illness and injury was higher than usual. So was the number of fire calls, especially the labor-intensive kind where crews must attach hoses to hydrants.

The two sets of abnormal circumstances added up to prohibitive overtime expenses, leading Chief Bobby Williams to tell the City Council it would be cheaper to rehire eight firefighters than to keep paying overtime. The council complied.

OK, but since these situations used to justify the rehiring are sharp departures from the norm, it’s reasonable to presume they won’t last. They are likely to return to customary figures and, the norm being the norm, dip on occasion to abnormally low levels, too. It all averages out.

Indeed, when the City Council struggles later this year to come up with a projected $1.5 million in necessary spending cuts, expect those eight jobs to receive scrutiny once again. If average conditions have returned by then, will the city eliminate them again or rationalize staffing levels based on worst-case projections?