[EAS] IPAWS expiration dates...

[Dave Turnmire]

Well, just when you thought you had heard everything...

Today our emergency management folks went to send an RWT from our CAP 
server, which distributes both directly to our broadcasters/cable 
companies, as well as via IPAWS... and IPAWS rejected it.  Worked fine 
just a few days ago.  Turns out... there is a 4 year expiration date 
associated with IPAWS that no one on this end I have spoken with thus 
far was aware existed.  And apparently no warning.

We are still exploring this issue, but, given the potential seriousness 
of this, I thought I'd get you a heads up.  So... if you are associated 
with a jurisdiction that first signed up with FEMA approaching 4 years 
ago... you better go read your paperwork and find out if your ability to 
generate alerts is in peril.  I am, frankly, hoping this is a mistake on 
Idaho's part somewhere.  I would really hate to think that FEMA's system 
is designed to dump without warning the ability to send EMERGENCY 
alerts.  That obviously has some rather serious implications.  Perhaps 
someone from FEMA monitoring this list can comment.

More to follow as I get further clarification...

Dave Turnmire
Chair
Idaho SECC