[EAS] Good article on EAS in AK

[Dave Turnmire]

Is this accurate regarding the failure of NOAA to distribute IPAWS 
alerts causing EAS not to be activated in AK?  Why didn't the original 
message issued to FEMA for WEA also include the EAS channel?  Regarding 
NOAA... do they ever distribute IPAWS alerts?  We have SAGE ENDECs 
installed at our NOAA Weather offices in series with their NWR feed for 
non-weather EAS alerts.  But... we've repeatedly been told that their 
regional (national?) cyber-security policy prohibits connecting them to 
their network and thus they don't receive any IPAWS alerts on those 
SAGEs.  And while they can originate most non-weather alerts (via NWR), 
I'm not aware of them having any mechanism within their own 
infrastructure for forwarding IPAWS alerts.  Maybe I'm missing something...

On the other hand... I'd love to have NOAA Weather allow for issuing 
Non-Weather Emergency Messages (NWEM) originated by authorized non-NOAA 
personnel via IPAWS.  But last I heard... they still can't fix the kinks 
(apparently related to Haz-Collect) on their technology to make that 
work.  I understand that at least part of those kinks involve duplicate 
messages.  But that is a national issue... I'm wondering if the reporter 
for the cited article got mixed up between this issue and the issue of 
whether an IPAWS-EAS alert got originated in the first place.

That being said... sounds like there was an intern at NOAA that was 
pretty well trained for an intern... and made a heroic effort to get the 
word out in difficult circumstances.  If so... Kudos to him/her!  And 
apparently the broadcasters did their part...

Dave

On 6/25/2018 11:09 AM, Rich Parker wrote:
> This is a well researched and well written article that I thought
> others might find interesting - I hope that it inspires all of us to
> work harder together to fix some of the problems that keep happening
> with the system.
>
> http://juneauempire.com/news/state/2018-06-24/shaken-system-alaska-s-disaster-warning-program-has-critical-flaws-documents
>
...