[EAS] [sbe-eas] IPAWS OPEN failure

[Adrienne Abbott]

Part 11 also requires us to maintain our EAS equipment in a constant state of readiness and to document any time it's out of service. If there's a failure in the over the air equipment and it doesn't receive a monitored source you document that it was taken out of service for repairs and when it went back in service, along with a note about any tests or activations that were missed.  Part 11 does not specify a minimum down time for this documentation requirement and in the past with the legacy equipment you could have a receiver down for seven days before anyone knew there was a problem. With some models of the new equipment we know right away when there's a problem with the Internet access to the FEMA server and, one assumes, a state CAP server. Just because this outage didn't happen on a Monday when FEMA tests are issued doesn't necessarily mean there's no need to document the situation. As we've been told since CONELRAD the government could issue an activation at any time. I'm not an attorney but my job as an Alternative Inspector requires me to think like one and I think that it would be in the best interests of any station to document any outage of the CAP feed. 

Adrienne

On Sep 24, 2012, at 12:04 PM, Richard_Rudman <rar.bwwg at gmail.com> wrote:

> Michael/Everyone:
> 
> What you said in your post makes a lot of sense. The wild card could be that the IPAWS OPEN flavor of CAP uses the internet as its transmission medium, and the new EAS boxes all generate log information and even emails that let us know when there is a polling interruption. 
> 
> I got a bunch of emails today from people asking what happened over the weekend when they came to work after the weekend, looked at their logs, and saw there was a polling outage that lasted more than a day. A lot of people will want to know officially what their logging burden is for IPAWS OPEN, if any. I would hope your take on it will be the way this should go. Since the outage did not impinge on a Monday test issued by FEMA, what you are saying seems to be the way this should settle out. 
> 
> Standard Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV (or radio). When we are in doubt about such things, we should always check with our legal experts, if not the Commission itself. 
> 
> That said, hopefully this issue will be clarified in the way you suggest in the final version of the Part 11 rewrite.
> 
> Richard Rudman
> 
> On Sep 24, 2012, at 9:43 AM, Kluger, Michael wrote:
> 
>> .  Beyond that, I don't see why there should be any more of a requirement to log an outage in a CAP source than there is to log an outage in an over the air source.
> 
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