[EAS] CA Fires/EAS Activation

[Barry Mishkind]

Hi Paul,

You raise good questions, germane to the situation California. 

Part of the solution is suggested by your comments that the EMs don't know you nor your station hotline.

Wh is there no contact/conversation/planning between you all?  If you heard from a listener that a fire was raging nearby, what would you do? 
        1. Nothing, because you are fully automated, and NO ONE pays
                any attention to EAS, the phones, etc. ("Don't bother us at night!")?
        2. Call the local EM (do you have HIS number?) and get details to air?
        3. Contact local 911 center for information/direction?
        4. Receive a call from  EM, who knows your station, and has the number
                of someone who cares 24/7?
        5. Look to the local LP-1 (oh, that's you!) to contact whatever agency
                or entity your local plan calls for to originate alerts? If no one
                knows who is the top of the EAS alerting, perhaps it is time
                to open dialog. 
        6. Provide the information from your listener to the EM agency, in
                case no one has called them - or the EM is doing something
                really smart like trying reverse 911 in an area where the
                phone lines were burned (remember Colorado?)?

Once an alert is issued, do you have a plan as to what your stations would do?

Even if the SECC is not helpful (as in many states) any station can plan for
handling disasters, if their desire is to serve the community. Look at 
what KZLT did. (link from www.theBDR.net/articles/fcc/eas/eas.html)

Clay Freinwald will likely talk about the close cooperation there is in the
Seattle area. That is fine.... although not always the way in many places.
There still is a lot of "Kingdom" agencies that  do not want to let any
information out, as it might reduce their "Kingdom."  Stations should
work to knock that down. But, it does take commitment to the 
community, something sadly lacking in many places. 

I can attest to a major forest fire here, going up one side of the
mountain range (10,000 feet) and the down to a town mostly
shielded from Tucson. Their local station is part of a consolidator,
who replaced the burned transmitter site with an emergency
transmitter and antenna flown in, so the automated hits format
could keep playing to the big city!  There was no thought to 
taking a transmitter or exciter and a coat hanger out to the
some town and broadcast from a van or card table. But, they
did, apparently, meet their sales quota for the month.

At 08:02 AM 10/17/2017, Paul Campbell wrote:
>Regarding the decision of the Santa Rosa officials to "not activate EAS" for the fires, I'm a little curious just how that would've been done had their decision gone the other way.
>

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