[EAS] GMC Objections

[Adrienne Abbott]

Ed--
>From my perspective, it wasn't a matter of concern about activations by
politically motivated elected officials. The GMC was, in two words,
impractical and unworkable. 

Nevada does not have a history of statewide disasters. We do have a history
of regional disasters that involve our bordering states. In addition, our
DMA's don't end at the state line. They spread through large swaths of three
states in spite of the time differences in those surrounding states. And we
have radio stations that are licensed to one state and have their main
studios--and the majority of their audience--in another state. Emergency
authority varies from state to state. In Nevada, only the Governor can order
an evacuation, so if the governor of California or Arizona or Oregon issues
a GMC for an evacuation, how do our border stations deal with the activation
and the resulting audience confusion? And what about the time differences?

The GMC proposal did not include any guidelines or even any recognition of
these issues so resolving them would be difficult and time consuming.
Nowhere was there an authority given for the SECC to make the decisions that
would have been needed. 

Because our disasters can involve our state borders, our Emergency Managers
train and work with their counterparts across those borders. They have
agreements or compacts to deal with cross-border issues and those agreements
are not dependent on a specific governor or politician. The ability to "tag"
a CAP activation rightfully belongs to these officials.
Adrienne

"Radio burps, it cries, it needs to be fed all the time, it requires
constant attention, but we love it." Jim Aaron WGLN 

-----Original Message-----
From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On
Behalf Of Ed Czarnecki
the FCC has eliminated the GMC

For the sake of clarification, could we specify - in a sentence or two -
what the core objection was to the GMC ...  from BWWG's perspective, NASBAs,
and/or NAB's perspective.

Is (a) giving a politician (i.e. non emergency management / non law
enforcement) such a capability.  Is it (b) giving anyone such a capability?

In other words - was the core objection to GMC the "G" or the "MC".  Or was
it something else?

This clarification would - at least for me - help guide additional comments
on the list... 

(just to recap what GMC actually meant, per the ECIG guidelines adopted by
FEMA ... the GMC capability was to basically tag an existing EAS event code
with a "true/false" CAP info parameter block that (if marked "true") would
have simply overrided device Originator and Event Code filtering for
automatic forwarding. Local device Location Code filters, duplicate alert
prevention, and the alert duration limit would have still applied.)

-----Original Message-----
From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On
Behalf Of Richard_Rudman the FCC has eliminated the GMC

Thanks to Ed, Bill, Mike and Tom so far for views on what should happen
first. I certainly agree that training is important, but I think we first
have to agree on exactly what EM community warning training needs to
accomplish that current training does not accomplish. At this time I remain
unconvinced that warnings are truly integrated into the practice of
emergency management as an essential and valuable first response resource.
IC247 can be improved.

I have a great deal of respect for the expertise and professionalism of
emergency managers, but I personally believe there is still too much of a
disconnect between the warning resource as it relates to overall emergency
management. I'll give you a good example. I doubt that those in charge when
a gas main explosion happens would fail to immediately dispatch key first
responders. But, as over 60 years of warning research has documented,
warnings fail most often at the origination point. CAP can and will help,
but operational changes have to happen too.

The research I refer to resides at the Natural Hazards Center of the
University of Colorado at Boulder. When the Partnership For Public Warning
(PPW) was founded in 2001 we drew heavily on this repository for reports.
Many of them were authored by someone I consider to be one of the foremost
experts in the field, Dr. Dennis Mileti, Professor Emeritus at the U of C,
Boulder. Dennis was also a key supporter and member of the PPW.

I would suggest that anyone interested in the priceless body of  knowledge
accumulated on warnings at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the work
of Dr. Mileti check out these links:

http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/research/qr/
http://urbanearth.gps.caltech.edu/about-2/dr-dennis-s-mileti/ 

We can discuss the merits of what happens first "post GMC", but if there is
one overall vision coming out of this discussion that I'd like to see:

When emergency managers everywhere treat warnings as a key element of first
response, we will be a lot closer to winning the hearts and minds of Part 11
entities so they will willingly volunteer to carry all EAS events in their
local EAS plans. If this happens, people at risk will receive better, timely
warnings that can help save more lives and property.

Thanks,

Richard Rudman

On Jan 14, 2012, at 3:33 PM, Tom Spencer wrote:

>Certainly when the FCC opened up EBS for local and regional alerting, 
>the state, county, and municipal agencies should have been brought on 
>board with what it is and how to activate it, rather than leaving it up 
>to the discretion of the stations.

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