[EAS] About this multilingual order...

[Clay Freinwald]

Paul - 

I am calling, conference call, meeting of the Washington State SECC for this
coming Thursday to determine how we wish to handle this.   Understand that
our SECC is composed of a number of people.

The way I look at it we can handle this a couple of ways - 

1- Do a Survey of all participants - Provide them with a form to fill out
and return.
>> That would be difficult as we don't really have a list of all of them and
no one to manage it.

2- Create a repository for their information (regardless of what form/format
they choose.   That would become a part of our EAS Plan for that day that
someone wants the information.
>> Frankly I like this one the best - and - The fact that our State is
already doing a lot of work with Multilingual Alerting they may well be
willing to provide the mechanics for this.
>> We already have a 'Tab' in our EAS Plan for this info (some Tabs are
simply links) as we anticipated something was coming and wanted a
place-holder.

As for other languages  - Washington State already has established criteria
for dealing with this based on a threshold for non-English speakers in each
county.

Re. Testing  or use of EAS - We are just starting to venture into this -
Testing with one station that has a Sage that is now Spanish capable.   We
will be testing this with our State CAP system soon. - Right now the some
counties are already working with EAS, especially those with high percentage
of non-English speakers ...In these cases their EMD have non-English staff
that can originate the messages.

We have made no plans for any participant to translate at the Station level.

Hope this is helpful

Clay Freinwald
Washington SECC

-----Original Message-----
From: EAS [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Paul Campbell

I'm starting to get questions from the folks in my market about this latest
gift from the Commission, and thought it might help to just get some quick
feedback from you (if you'd be so kind) on the following:

-In a nutshell, the FCC wants all of us to better serve the non-English
speaking populace about all things EAS. To that end, we're all required to
submit an official document to our respective State Chairs by Nov. 6 that
indicates just how we're going to accomplish this task. Moreover, we're then
required to list future steps we're planning on taking to further implement
this. Questions:
	
1) Is there some form template online we should be using (sorta like the
ETRS)? If so, is there a link?
2) All it says is "other than English". I'm sure what they mean is Spanish,
but I just started working with a new tower crew that's all Russian. It
doesn't seem fair to leave them out.
3) Would having my RMT script rerecorded first in English and then
immediately in the other language be enough to satisfy this latest fiasco?
Perhaps for our future steps, we might indicate on our official document
that we're planning on adding Japanese to the RMT script, and then a new
language every six months.

Seriously, are stations going to get fined if this isn't done? You guys are
wayyyy more up on this than me, so I'd appreciate the help. 

Arigato. 

__________________________________________________________
The EAS Forum Discussion List is hosted by the BWWG (Broadcast Warning
Working Group). http://eas.radiolists.net Please invite your friends to join
our Forum! The sign up is at:
https://lists.radiolists.net/mailman/listinfo/eas
___________________________________________________________