def load_alerts(self):
        """
        NOTE: use refresh() instead of this, if you are just needing to refresh the alerts list
        Gets raw xml (cap) from the Alerts feed, throws it into the parser
        and ends up with a list of alerts object, which it stores to self._alerts
        """
        self._feed = AlertsFeed(state=self.scope, maxage=self.cachetime)
        parser = CapParser(self._feed.raw_cap(), geo=self.geo)
        self._alerts = parser.get_alerts()