[EAS] Engineer Emergency Credentials

[Rod Zeigler]

I would like to expand on and reply to a couple of things.
The PEP programs primary mission is survivability and maintaining an 
open conduit of communication via EAN. With that being said, it has an 
adjunct mission of providing local, state, and tribal authorities with 
the opportunity to use the same open conduit when an EAN is not being 
issued. This is over and above EAS and other alerting techniques and 
would only be used in cases of dire, large area, situations.
I have been on both sides of the emergency services issue. Prior to 
getting back into broadcast engineering I was involved with emergency 
management and emergency communications support. I rarely had any 
problems with local LEO's during an emergency and have been aided more 
than once to get to where I needed to go. Dealing with the locals is 
relatively easy and can be helped by getting acquainted with them 
beforehand.
I have also had to go to places where I did not know the local EM/LE 
personnel. Having a logo'd vehicle helped a lot. In one case we had 4 
stations down (all of the radio the area had) and I needed to get to one 
tower site to see if it still existed. An F4 tornado missed it by 1/2 
mile. The other stations came back on as power was restored. This 
incident had roadblocks established a full 10 miles from the incident 
scene and talking my way through that initial roadblock was the hardest 
as it was manned by governmental road employees. They were told to not 
let anyone through, and they took that seriously. They told me I would 
have to deal with the highway patrol trooper at the scene if I went 
through their roadblock. This suited me just fine! The trooper was quite 
understanding and told me where the road was impassible and that I would 
have to find my own way around, which I did. Having some kind of 
credential to get past the first roadblock would have made life a lot 
easier.
I would never suggest that a FEMA credential would be possible, or even 
a good idea. There is way too much red tape involved with those and they 
are for specific uses only.
However a credential issued by a body such as the NAB for engineering 
purposes (no news people would have them) that the state broadcast 
associations could make their state and local EM's aware of could help 
in many cases. In many incidents outside people are brought in who do 
not know the local engineers, in other cases engineers may be sent to 
places where they are unknown to the locals. I have two groups 4 hours 
away from where I am stationed. Getting to either place could be 
problematic without some kind of authoritative credential because they 
do not have time or manpower to check every person wanting to get into a 
disaster area.
These days credentialing is becoming more and more necessary due to 
security concerns. At some point an association or Federal body, such as 
Congress, needs to establish some kind of process so that the few of us 
that there are in this business can do our jobs, which is providing 
communication to the public, when it is most needed.

-- 
R. V. Zeigler, Dir. of Eng.
Nebraska Rural Radio Assn.
KRVN-KTIC-KNEB-KAMI
Ne. SECC Chairman
NEBA Board Member
www.krvn.com