[EAS] 'improving' EAS

[Sean Donelan]

On Thu, 19 Jul 2018, Clay Freinwald wrote:
> Bill Ruck wrote -
>> There is no EAS code for FIRE.
>
> REALLY ?    What is an FRW ???

In addition to FRW - Fire Warning, there is always CEM - Civil Emergency 
Message, a catchall for any other emergency message.

The challange for warning coordinators is lack of guidance or explanation 
from FCC or FEMA. As recently as the June 21, 2018 webinar with the FCC, a 
local emergency manager asked what types of emergencies can WEA or EAS be 
used?  The FCC response (paraphrased) was essentially "read table (e) 
[EAS Event Codes] in Part 11.31."

If you are a local warning coordinator, the list of EAS event codes in 
Part 11.31(e) is just list of some vague phrases and codes with no 
explantion or guidance. I understand why low-level officials at FCC and 
FEMA don't want to go on the record, even if they wanted to.  I had to 
dance the bureaucratic two-step when my boss's boss boss directed me to 
avoid certain questions in public forums.

The Common Alerting Protocol document isn't better - 
Urgency, severity, and certainty confuse the heck out of warning 
coordinators so they usually just turn them all up to "11" (movie 
reference). The other CAP parameters like category and response type seem 
to be almost random in IPAWS messages, except for NOAA's messages.

If there was clear guidance for wildfire and local emergency managers, 
they would be more confident when to use and not use WEA and EAS 
appropriately. That does not necessarily mean the salesperson selling an 
alert notification system to a county.