[EAS] Napa Earthquake

[Tim Stoffel]

All of that advance warning stuff Mike mentioned is all fine and good if: 1.) It is reliable and not prone to false tripping, and 2.) You can get all those folks to buy into it. This kind of infrastructure costs serious money, and the command and control for it has to be just as reliable (and secure) as the initiating system.

EAS may be two orders of magnitude slower, but it has two strong things going for it: 1.) The EAS infrastructure is largely distributed in the community, and belongs to individual entities. It has fewer single points of failure. And,  2.) It uses RF to communicate. It is immune to problems related to physical cabling, except inside a relatively compact broadcast plant. Maybe EAS is not fast enough to warn of an earthquake. But it might be able to provide information just after the event, when timely information is needed the most, and wireline infrastructure is least able to provide it.

This, BTW, is why amateur radio has such a stellar track record of providing emergency communications. They fulfill very well both conditions 1 and 2 above. And although I am thrilled to see digital communication methods slowly coming to the ham radio community, it is the simple HF CW/SSB and VHF FM that works when all else doesn't. This is why these simple modulation techniques will always be relevant.

Tim Stoffel