[EAS] The words we use

[Botterell, Arthur@CalOES]

From: EAS <eas-bounces at radiolists.net> on behalf of Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com>

CSRIC VI Working Group Descriptions
Working Group 2: Comprehensive Re-imagining of Emergency Alerting

FEMA National Advisory Council
IPAWS Subcommittee

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I can't comment on either of those processes here, but let me suggest that one of the big hurdles is simply a matter of the words we use.  Particularly whenever we use the term "EAS" it comes loaded with a whole raft of preconceptions and tacit assumptions about what the system is good for.  After the April 1994 tornados that demolished Xenia Ohio among other places, it seemed cost-effective to expand the use of EBS (as it was at the time) from its original national civil defense application to include transmitting localized warnings from the National Weather Service.

Viewed in hindsight I think we made an error of good intentions at that point by including general civil warnings as well as weather alerts.  Obviously state and local government was pleased to get something for free... especially in light of what was happening to the national economy at that time.  The error came in two parts.  First, the complexity of local public warning needs was swept aside by the assumption that EAS would work well for all of them, at that time and in the future.  As the same time, the availability of and focus on EBS/EAS sucked all the air out of state and local public warning planning and capability development.  When the whole system was revisited in the mid-90s, EAS and its progenitor the Weather Radio system became the a-priori answers to all questions of public warning.  People who'd invested much of their careers in trying to make EBS/EAS work at the local level became rigidly attached to the assumption that those systems were all we really needed.  Like the well-intentioned but slightly dim draft horse Boxer in Huxley's "Animal Farm", the standard answer to any problem was a patriotic uptilt of the chin and a pledge that "I will work harder."

It wasn't until 2000 when the White House published the seminal "Effective Disaster Warnings" report known informally as the Red Book that there was any broad attempt to consider public alert and warning from first principles rather than simply as a matter of maintaining and extending EAS and NWR.  By that time there was a large constituency of people, including vendors and civil servants, whose jobs were predicated on the preservation and propagation of EAS and NWR no matter what, and those "usual suspects" held almost unbreakable sway over the public warning policy discussion.  In 2006 the assumption that EAS should be used for local emergencies was deeply imbedded politically and left DHS/FEMA and for that matter the FCC with little freedom of direction..  (And I have to confess that I was along for the ride at that time.)

Winston Churchill said "first we shape our houses, and then they shape us."  He might have said the same about our vocabulary.  If the question of public warning is framed in terms of EAS it becomes almost impossible to genuinely re-imagine public warning.  That's why I'm so strongly opposed to the use of the EAS and NWR SAME codes in WEA, a completely different system with a whole different set of strengths and constraints.  If we allow the idea that WEA is functionally equivalent to EAS to remain rooted in common "knowledge", we will make it almost impossible to have a genuine discussion about the public warning challenge and the strengths and weaknesses of various tools and approaches.

Not that I have any strong feelings on the topic...

Art