[EAS] "extra" CAP test - Not in TN

[David Turnmire]

On 10/11/2012 10:37 AM, Dave Kline wrote:
> ...
> I'm not sure of the logic behind sending to each time zone separately.
> Isn't it more work with greater chance of failure, than just sending one to the whole country at the same time?
>
The logic is simple... it is IMPOSSIBLE under the existing EAS protocol 
to send a single alert to 50 states (and a couple territories?).  The 
protocol limits you to 31 FIPS codes.  Remember, this was created 
originally by NOAA weather... sending RWTs to the entire country wasn't 
in their vision at the time.  People living in small states 
(geographically) may not have any reason to be intimately familiar with 
this limitation, but at this moment I'm trying to figure out how to 
navigate it in Idaho... which has 44 counties... 13 more than the EAS 
protocol can handle.  Historically it hasn't been a big deal, we use the 
"All Idaho" FIPS code for RMTS, etc, toss in a few other FIPS codes for 
counties in neighboring states that we're responsible for, and we easily 
fit within the 31 FIPS code limit.  One region of our state had 
significant issues with duplications of RMTs from a neighboring state, 
but under our legacy system, everything got funneled through a couple 
LPs, so they just blocked the redundant alerts and things worked 
tolerably well.

Then came CAP.  Which bypasses the LPs and delivers directly to the end 
stations.  Which in general is a good thing, but now we were back to the 
duplicate RMT issue.  In a smaller state we could have minimized the 
problem by listing counties individually in the RMT and left out those 
counties that were participating in the neighboring state's RMT that 
month.  But... we still had 34 counties to deal with.   Hmmmm

In any event, FEMA had a simple solution for their problem... send out 
multiple RWTs.  But why stop at two alerts, each with 25?  For just a 
little more effort, you could do it by time zone and thus for most 
people, the local time was the same for everyone.  Of course, the "local 
time" was off a bit for part of those states that occupied more than one 
time zone (such as ours), but so what?  Its just a test.  And it was 
still predictable what time it would (or should) be sent.

And you say what about national emergency alerts?  They use the EAN, 
which doesn't use FIPS codes anyway.  And what about the mythical "All 
USA" FIPS code?  Just that... a myth.  Some have proposed one, and that 
may well be a good idea, but it is not currently part of the rules that 
we live by, so how various EAS devices would respond to it is somewhat 
unpredictable.

So... while it is a favorite pass time of human beings the world over to 
assume those in authority have _____ for brains.... sometimes they 
really do have a good... or at least acceptable... reason for what they 
are doing.

Dave