How a shark attack on an Alabama teen led to this new U.S.-wide alert system

Lulu Gribbin was 15 when she survived a shark attack off the coast of Florida. She lost her left hand, part of her right leg and almost her life.What she didn’t know when she entered the water on that day in 2024 was that another woman had been bitten by a shark 90 minutes earlier and just 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) down the beach. Had she known about the earlier attack, there is no way she would have been swimming, she said.Gribbin’s story has inspired new federal legislation to authorize emergency alerts to mobile phones to warn beachgoers when a shark has bitten someone in the area.President Donald Trump last week signed “Lulu’s Law,” which requires the Federal Communications Commission to allow the emergency messages. The legislation, which Gribbin advocated for, authorizes the warnings by classifying a shark attack as an event for which an emergency alert can be issued. It is up to states to implement the warnings. Gribbin’s home state of Alabama approved such a warning system last year.“It’s really just common-sense legislation. It says that whenever there has been a shark attack in a certain area where you are near, it will send an alert to your phone, exactly like how an Amber Alert system works when a child is abducted,” she said.Gribbin said she hopes the alert system will help prevent attacks like hers. “I definitely see this law working in the future and I’m really excited to hopefully save lives,” she said. A fight to survive Gribbin was one of three people bitten by a shark on June 7, 2024, off the Florida Panhandle.She was on a mother-daughter trip to the Florida Panhandle. Gribbin said she and her friend had been diving for sand dollars.“All of the sudden my best friend yelled, ‘Shark!’ and so we all started swimming for our lives,” Gribbin recalled. She said she remembered that sharks are attracted to frantic splashing and yelled for everyone to be calm. Gr