[EAS] FCC BLU Alert Proposal

[Botterell, Arthur@CalOES]

All very true, Sean.  At the same time, I think we need to remember that state and local use of EAS was ever only an afterthought, mostly a reaction to the historic tornado outbreak of April, 1974, primarily added to support NWS.  EAS was never, and is not today, designed primarily for local alerting.  At FEMA EAS is managed within the National Continuity Program, whose responsibility is for continuity of federal government.

Because it was available for free, EAS took most of the air out of the room for states and localities that might have developed more optimal capabilities in the years since then.  It was much less expensive to recruit broadcast industry (mostly) volunteers to try to make EAS work for localized alerts, notwithstanding the inherent mismatch between broadcast signal coverage and the sorts of hazards state and local agencies generally deal with.  (Even NWS to this day has to fight a continual rear-guard action against a threatened broadcasters' revolt over perceived "message flooding," which is a direct consequence of the blunt-instrument technology of EAS.)

Had geotargeted telephone notification not spotlighted the structural limitations of EAS over the past couple of decades, locals would probably still be hoping to make the federal-sized EAS fit their local needs.  It did come along, though, and was highly successful in the market.  Then came WEA, which reinforced emergency managers' and public safety folks' new-found appreciation that greater precision added great value and (perhaps more importantly) allowed them to avoid a lot of push-back both from the public and from broadcasters.

The SAME signalling scheme was an acceptable, albeit less than perfect, enhancement at the time of the EBS overhaul of the mid-90s.  But the basic operating concept of EAS hasn't changed in the 55 years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, while both threats and technical capabilities have evolved at an ever-accelerating pace.  Considering the evolving broadcast-industry landscape,  how long do we imagine it can remain viable, even with the levels of support we'd like to see?

(At this point I'll insert the inevitable Abraham Maslow quote: "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."  Is it possible that in our minds we've conflated EAS with the general problem of public alerting for so long that we struggle to imagine that any other approach is possible?)

Those who've labored through the past five decades and more to make EBS/EAS work as a state and local tool have nothing to be ashamed of... but there's no reason I can see to imagine that task is going to get any easier.  Instead of continuing to apply patches upon patches, is it possibly time to take a fresh look at the subject and devise a 21st-century approach to warning that might allow us at some point to hand EAS back to FEMA altogether, with our thanks for the loan?  

Art

* Abraham H. Maslow (1966). The Psychology of Science. p. 15.