[EAS] The way is sounded

[Adrienne Abbott]

On Sep 29, 2016, at 5:01 PM, Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com> wrote:

>Practices? How often do you believe the elected Los Angeles sheriff actually shows up at the EOC to practice EAS alerts? Or did he record the monthly test script once, and the EOC plays the same recording every month as long as he stays in office?

Sean--
Richard will have to explain the finer points of how RMT's are done in LA but as the chair of the neighboring state, I have to say that Lark Hadley has put a lot of effort and attention into getting EAS to work in Earthquake Country. Yes, it's far from perfect but Lark and Richard and now Art Botterell are chipping away at the problems. There are areas in the country where EAS is in much worse shape but there are no Larks, Richards or Arts to care enough to try to fix the problems. 

As for practice, here in Nevada state and local emergency officials voice most of our RMT's. Most of the year they use our CAP platform but we still set aside a couple of months when the tests are activated by the Local Primary stations in their Operational Area. For those tests we encourage the designated, authorized originator to visit the LP station to pre-record their audio message and develop a relationship with the station and staff. If they can't fit a visit into their schedule we arrange for them to call into the station and record the message over the phone. And yes, they identify themselves in the audio message because that adds to the credibility of the test. And the feedback they get from the community-"I heard you on the radio/TV"-is pure EAS gold. 

I should note that the only elected officials authorized to issue activations according to the Nevada EAS Plan are our county sheriffs and we make sure they aren't up for election when we develop the annual RMT schedule. We also set aside a month for the National Weather Service to issue an RMT which we make them do from the Local Primary stations rather than NOAA Weather Radio. We've had failures at NOAA transmitters and this way the WFO staff knows they can issue activations through the LP stations. 

EAS is far from perfect here but we have broadcasters, state and local officials who care enough about Public Warning to put in the effort to make it work. 

Adrienne