[EAS] Blue Alerts Are Back

[Sean Donelan]

On Fri, 19 May 2017, Botterell, Arthur at CalOES wrote:
> Is that a "So's your old protocol!" response, Sean?

The pendulum swings back and forth.  The original reason EAS had only a 
single Civil Emergency Message (CEM) for all non-weather, local alerts was 
it made it easier for state & local officials.  Although I also think it 
was because the original EAS event code list came from the National 
Weather Service. NWS primarily included weather event codes.

> Those descriptive details are quoted from the OASIS CAP specification. 
> That they aren't visible to users in many origination software packages 
> is, of course, lamentable.  But these are specifics that certainly COULD 
> be taught.

The current practice seems to be set all paramaters to the max.

The difference between how WEA and EAS processes the parameters has caused 
confusion multiple times.  For example, Fort Hood recently sent a "test" 
message as a "Local Area Emergency" alert Immediate/Severe/Observed, with 
the predictable results.