[EAS] IPAWS OPEN failure

[Skinner, Jim]

The fact is that a required national alert will NOT come from the
President through IPAWS. If our EAS equipment has been ready to
broadcast an EAN from the PEP/NPR system is IPAWS really an outage in
the Federal sense?  Unless IPAWS is your primary connection from the
assigned PEP.  Do we follow the letter of the law or the spirit of the
rules?

Also I don't believe CAP connection alarms are required since some EAS
equipment do not have it.  So are stations and cable required to log
only if their equipment has the feature?  What if the connection logging
or alarm is disabled, are we breaking the rules?  

On the other hand Adrienne I agree it is a good idea to document
outages.  I am just asking what is the real purpose with the present
capabilities of the IPAWS.  

Scratching my head as usual

  -- 
Jim Skinner CPBE CBNT
Nebraska SECC Chair

-----Original Message-----
From: 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