[EAS] About this multilingual order...

[tpt at sevenrangesradio.com]

The reg. (11.21 (d) et seq) wants the answer to three questions:
A. Do you air EAS alerts in a language beside English?
B. Do you plan to do so in the future?
C. If not, why not?

My response to our SECC (such as it is) was simple:

1. No, we haven't aired EAS traffic in any other language besides English
2. NO we don't plan to do so in the future; and here is why--
3. We (mostly) relay all alerts automatically; nor do we have staff members who are fluent in a second language; and
4. Our Hispanic population in our county of license is only 1%; Asian less than 1% (and, of course,Census data does not indicate what % of either population lacks English fluency), hence  since the number of residents who are not fluent in English is so small, multilingual EAS announcements are neither feasible, nor justified. 

I actually have one station I do work for that has the EAS decoder at the transmitter site.  It's a school station, the school's internet connection is flaky; while there is a wireless ISP on their tower. Kind of impossible to originate any EAS alerts.