[EAS] concerning the request for new weather Event Codes

[Suzanne Goucher]

Cell phone alerts should be viewed as an incomplete solution at best, albeit it would have been an elegant one IF all the cell companies had opted in.  But they expended a lot of political capital to make CMAS/WEA optional rather than mandatory, so the vast majority have opted out.  The Big Four (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mo) have opted in "in part," meaning they will carry alerts in some, but not necessarily all, of their service areas - and best of luck to you if you try to find out where they do and don't.  It's far, far from ubiquitous, as broadcast alerting is.  So we are stuck with this weird dichotomy where the weather service drawn polygons to hit certain cell towers, and in the process draws in vast areas of broadcast signals where the event may not be happening.  But, as my idol Art Botterell said, no one ever died from a false alert, though they may complain about The Bachelor being interrupted by an alert for one county over. And as I urge the alert originators when I do trainings for them (yes, I know that's bass-ackwards, but that's the way this world works) -- when in doubt, WARN.  The broadcast community just needs to be a little more choosy about what events to warn for.  Severe thunderstorms are predictable, IMHO - you can see weather conditions setting up for them a couple of days out -- and thus they do not rise to the level of EAS, which is to be reserved for sudden, unforeseen, or unpredictable situations or events.  The unpredictable event in Maine is the thunderstorm that spawns tornadoes -- and yes, we get them here, with apparently increasing frequency.  Tornadoes are the events I want my constituents to be alerted to. 
Suzanne Goucher
Maine Association of Broadcasters

> On Jul 9, 2016, at 6:57 PM, Robertm <bcstlists at icloud.com> wrote:
> 
> The thing is that many weather events should not be on EAS. Even on my cell I turned NWS off since I kept getting gale warnings, even when the sun was shining. Whatever NWS is doing isn't working since I am on high ground, nowhere near the ocean but get gale warnings. 
> 
> 
>> On Jul 9, 2016, at 12:37 PM, Gary Glaenzer <glaenzer at frontier.com> wrote:
>> 
>> We had one here in western IL last week where the person droned on and on 
>> with names of towns I'd never heard of.....after 40 years in the 
>> are......and then to add insult to injury, started enumerating all the 
>> highways, from interstates down to state routes, that 'might be affected'
> 
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