[EAS] So, wouldn't you think after the missle fiasco that somone would have learned something?

[Ed Czarnecki]

There are lots of questions that hopefully would be addressed in an after-action report, if one is produced.

- how did this message get into the Alaska EAS chain?  Was there some other service in AK that did something here do an internal NWS test message? Is there any link between what happened here and the insertion of a routine test message into AccuWeather systems a few months ago?  

- Could this happen again? Are additional safeguards needed to prevent test messages from getting into live environments?

- should local authorities, NWS or broadcasters have issued a follow up message clarifying that what they heard was an inadvertent test?  An ADR ( presuming that affect code is enabled and local EAS equipment) ?

IF there were a CAP version of the test message on the IPAWS OPEN server, then the introduction of Triggered CAP Polling ( which the FCC recently clarified is permissible ) would allow EAS device to grab the CAP message -  which would hopefully state right up front that it's a TEST, in lieu of the broadcast EAS message.

However, a problem is that NWS CAP messaging is still not in IPAWS OPEN, due to a variety of technical issues.  So, broadcasters have to rely on FSK EAS monitoring for weather alerts, which means that the textual message he is going to be the standard EAS sentence.  There is no easy way to modify the EAS protocol itself to include some kind of "this is a test" flag.  

Even with CAP, the text crawl and audio would still include that long standard EAS sentence with list of counties, and THEN go to the CAP text which hopefully  would say "Test".  The DASDEC has an option to turn off that standard EAS sentence for CAP, but FCC rules appear to require that sentence in any event.  One proposal might be allowing gas participants to admit that standard sentence if the descriptive CAP text itself sufficiently fulfills that purpose.

The other problem is that this message shouldn't have been inserted into the EAS chain at all, in the first place.  However, it's not clear at the moment that this was due to NWS. I'm hearing info that another system or party may have either inserted - or modified and inserted - the EAS message into the chain in AK.

These ongoing mishaps are damaging the credibility of the system.  Do we need a new event code called OOP - for "oops"?

On May 11, 2018, 9:10 PM, at 9:10 PM, Rich Parker <rparker1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>A bit of an update - apparently, the THIS IS A TEST portion WAS at the
>'top' of the alert message - but because there were dozens of county
>FIPS in the alert, and they 'all had to be read' right after it said
>"This is a Tsunami Warning for the following....", the thing either
>timed out after 2 minutes, or people simply missed hearing it because
>of the incredibly long laundry list of locations that had to be 'read'
>before it got to the 'this is a test' portion.
>
>Apart from the original F'UP, this seems like a pretty big 'flaw' in
>the basic EAS alerting protocol - perhaps 'before' the laundry list of
>locations, there should be a way to have it first read 'THIS IS A
>TEST' - then the type of alert, then the long read of locations.
>
>Probably take another CSRIC to get that fixed - heaven help us all.....
>
>-rp
>
>__________________________________________________________
>The EAS Forum Discussion List is hosted by the BWWG (Broadcast Warning
>Working Group). The Core members of the BWWG are Adrienne Abbott, Clay
>Freinwald, Suzanne Goucher, Barry Mishkind, David Ostmo, Darryl Parker,
>Richard Rudman, Gary Timm, and Sharon Tinsley.
>http://eas.radiolists.net
>Please invite your friends to join our Forum! The sign up is at:
>https://lists.radiolists.net/mailman/listinfo/eas
>___________________________________________________________