[EAS] [] Daisy Chain

[Alex Hartman]

You could always throw the emergency management people under the bus
on the air. That usually gets some attention. Tell them that you have
no news about the situation and they aren't giving us any to inform
the public about how to proceed, because they apparently will be
calling you, you know, when the cell tower is on fire and not working.

If the area emergency management team wants to play hardball, the last
people you want to piss off is broadcasters/media folk. A station i
used to work at had to do that once for a train wreck in the area with
toxic chemical spills. They wouldn't tell us anything, so we told the
listeners "hey, avoid this area, there's chemicals there, they're not
telling us anything more, so if you want more info, here's the cell
phone number we have on file to the guy handling the situation".

We got a phone call from the county emergency folk the next day asking
us for a process in which we can communicate better.... funny how that
works.

It may not be graceful, pretty, or anything, but sometimes it's what
gets the job done. Forcing the bureaucrats to do something is always
an option when you have 100kW at your disposal, especially when my
license says specifically "serve the public interest".

--
Alex Hartman

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Adrienne  Abbott
<nevadaeas at charter.net> wrote:
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>
> Redgy--
>
> Chiming in here because this is something new...
>
> Example - last summer there was a forest fire - people were calling our
> station to find out about it and if people were being evacuated.  They would
> not provide us with any information, or announcements telling us that -
>
> we will call peoples cell phones if we need to alert them
>
> - and that was all we would get.  If asked about other people or a general
> announcement the answer was it is not important for them to know, they are
> not directly affected.
>
> How are your emergency officials calling people's cell phones? Telephone
> notification systems don't call cell phones, unless your emergency managers
> have some way that people can "register" their cell phone numbers and get
> them programmed into the system. Not everyone knows about that process and
> not everyone calls and registers. Then there are your tourists and
> visitors...Even the best telephone notification systems that use landline
> numbers don't reach everyone and most officials don't assume that they do.
> Like everything else in Emergency Management, public notification needs
> redundancy. The more methods you use to communicate a consistent message,
> the better chance you have of gaining public cooperation and the greater
> your chances of saving lives. EAS is not a monopoly and emergency managers
> need to understand that we are not saying that this is the only way to
> communicate emergency information. It's just one more way and with CAP, you
> can get broadcast, telephone notification, emails, text messages, social
> media and even community sirens.
>
> Adrienne Abbott
> Nevada EAS Chair
> "Radio burps, it cries, it needs to be fed all the time, it requires
> constant attention, but we love it." Jim Aaron WGLN
>