[EAS] Source of the "scary" text in Suffolk Co

[Botterell, Arthur@CalOES]

You're right, Ed, I was overreacting to what I sometimes perceive as a defeatist attitude.  I certainly know better than to charge you with defeatism.  And I agree that Ohio has taken a giant step forward.  (Folks who aren't familiar with what Ohio is doing in alerting with its public broadcasters really ought to check it out.)

My concern is that folks will rationalize endlessly to avoid facing up directly to the known underlying problems.  (What was it that Churchill said?  "You can count on the Americans to do the right thing, as soon as they've exhausted every alternative.")  That's why I'm skeptical of band-aid solutions... the bleeding continues while folks sit back and bask in an illusory sense of progress.  And when the problems recur there's often a rush to blame the victims, again rather than admit that we aren't finished yet.

As illustrated in Suffolk County this week, the bleeding will continue until we stop making excuses for EAS-as-it-has-been and quit trying to obscure its flaws with an occasional coat of technical or procedural paint.  IMHO, at least.

And Adrienne, you're right... many millions of (mostly federal grant) dollars have been spent by officials who had a sense they needed something better but were never educated about what was really wrong, mainly because the available "authorities" on the subject were so committed to the old technology that they found it hard even to imagine something better.  It's a chronic problem in government... acquisition of technical knowledge tends to be almost entirely vendor-driven.  (And yes, that was a lot of which the late, lamented Partnership for Public Warning was trying to address before it ran out of funding.)

Art