[EAS] ipawsnonweather question

[Richard_Rudman]

Sean evidently is unaware of the history of broadcaster volunteerism for emergency information, alerts and warnings.

For Sean or any others who wonder where this came from, this goes back to the public service gene whose beginnings lie in the public service aspect of the licenses broadcasters hold.

The phrase "public interest, convenience and necessity" was a key concept in the Communications Act of 1927.

Some of us who have worked in broadcasting for a while still feel that a license to broadcast content is also a license to give back to the communities we serve.

However, we are, in the opinion of some, at a point where increasing administrative burdens have brought us into the land of more unfunded administrative mandates. Some of us saw this coming years ago, and hoped that the emergency management community would stop treating alert and warning as an afterthought, and build on that long history of cooperation that came out of our broadcasting DNA. 

To be fair, I can point to one notable shining example where the Washington State SECC and their state's EM community have built a strong warning infrastructure partnership. 

I am sure that there are other examples of state/SECC working partnerships.

This all begs the question, Should those of us who continue to volunteer, continue to volunteer? 

Richard Rudman
CA SECC Vice Chair

>On Aug 1, 2018, at 6:40 PM, Adrienne Abbott <nevadaeas at charter.net> wrote:

>Sean asks: Why does so much of the nation's emergency alerting and public
>warning system rely on unfunded volunteers?