[EAS] Blue Alerts Are Back

[Sean Donelan]

On Mon, 22 May 2017, Ed Czarnecki wrote:
> Regarding the 27 states that have Blue Alert plans in place, can anyone
> confirm whether or not:
>
> (a) EAS is considered part of that process?
>
> (b) and if so, the LEW code is to be used?  Or other?

The EAS event codes used for "Blue Alerts" in the last 5 years appear to 
be

CEM - Civil Emergency Message
LEW - Law Enforcement Warning
CAE - Child Abduction Emergency (in California, later determined to be a 
mistake by CHP, which may explain why CHP says EAS is not used for Blue 
Alerts)

Florida and Montana are two state EAS plans which mention Blue Alerts 
explicitly. Florida and Montana designate LEW as the prefered EAS event 
code for Blue Alerts.

Published State Blue Alert plans (separate from Amber and EAS state 
plans) are very vague about the process for distributing Blue alerts. 
They'll say something like Blues Alerts will be disseminated in the same 
manner as Amber Alerts, or say the State Police will dissiminate the 
alert, without specifying how.