[EAS] EAS Rant

[Dave Kline]

I previously asked:

> Why do those states that require NWS as an EAS source do that if we
> never plan to utilize NWS except at the whim of individual stations (or
> station groups)?

>From Sean Donelan:

"I get a different impression from reading 45+ state and territory plans,
and watching how many different local EAS Operational Areas perform around
the country. They don't all follow what this forum or BWWG decides is a
best practice.

Many plans still specify that civil authorities FAX alerts, such as Amber
alerts to the local primary stations.  And some LP stations still
re-originate NWS weather warnings. Although NWS has nearly 1,000
transmitters, I give the benefit of a doubt to the SECC/LECC in those
areas they've decided to use the LP to reach furthur than the NWS
transmitter.

Lack of new written documentation or national guidance.  Stations started
using EBS in the 1970s for weather warnings. Most of those stations care
alot about their local communities, which is why they keep volunteering to
be LPs (or PEPs, etc). They also have invested in branding as the station
you tune too for emergency alerts. So they keep doing, what they've been
doing.

Why do EAS managers or LP stations still complain about NWS sending
lots of SVR or FFW taking over their airwaves.  They are all optional.
Stations, incuding LPs, don't need to carry them if they don't want too."
----
Sean,
Your observations here are spot on as is usually the case. And in reading your reply, it does seem that we agree about the state of relaying weather alerts being done out of a sense of community service rather than any obligation to one authority or another.

And while you are also correct that operational areas do not follow what this forum (or others) and the BWWG decides is best practice, I would suggest that we also might make their jobs a lot easier when they do follow us here. When we talk EAS here, we do a pretty convincing job of sounding like we know everything about every aspect of it.

As was previously mentioned, EAS while not being an engineering function, does seem to be handled for the most part by technical staff at most stations. Management may, or may not choose to have any say in how EAS is implemented, but in many cases, it seems that any involvement by other than engineers is sorely lacking. SECCs and LECCs are often heavy in technical talent if not run by those from our ranks.

In the past, alerting for our local area was pretty much driven only by what NWS was doing. We really had no comprehensive local plan for anything beyond weather alerting. NWS even handled the Amber Alerts. And the state plan at that time was one of those that I think you described as crossing out "EBS" and writing in "EAS." Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of a few folks included a number of engineering types, that has been resolved in more recent years.

There was an attempt by one local engineer to establish an LECC. While other engineers from the local area (myself included) offered to help, it never really got off the ground as it lacked support from the local EM community. A few years later one of the local county EM's decided that not having a local plan was one of the things that kept him awake at night.

He pulled together resources from several surrounding counties which included a group of local station engineers. Other, non-technical station personnel were invited, but didn't ever get involved. That EM recognized the technical nature of EAS and other subsequent warning schemes, but also understood that this was not something that engineers alone should be doing.

I was among two or three other local station engineers invited to participate in drafting a local plan. Our involvement was to address what could and could not be done within the technical confines of EAS. As a result, the EM that started this effort came to the conclusion that broadcaster should not be originators of warnings. Our job is to facilitate the needs of EMs and incident commanders to get THEIR word out to the public. That is the way things should be.

The problem of engineers running EAS stems from the same thing that afflicts all of us. We have a sense of wanting to make things work properly. EAS is no different. But in our efforts to do that, others have mistaken us for being the person to do it all. I make all of the decisions regarding EAS at my station, which happens to be an SR if that matters to anyone. There has been, up until at least recently, no desire on the part of anyone else to to be involved except to complain about the number of alerts being aired. You know, those little nuisances like tornadoes and abducted children. And like so many of the rest of us who are always willing to just take on one more job, we have pigeon-holed ourselves into being all things EAS at our respective stations.

Just look at how knowledgeable we seem to be here on these forums. To the outside world (GMs and PDs) it must look like we really love doing this. It becomes one less thing that other station staff don't need to be bothered with. "Should we relay Blue Alerts?" "I dunno, what's a Blue Alert?" "Is that an EAS thing?" "Go ask the engineer if we should air those."

Whatever we've done, we've done to ourselves. If we think other non-technical people need to be involved in EAS we need to start putting those non-technical decisions on those people. So much of what we discuss about EAS in these forums is not technical.
We discuss the politics, the finances, the affects on programming and we do it so eloquently that no PD in his right mind would even want to entertain taking it on.

"How come we didn't get the RWT from FEMA this week?"
That's a technical question. That's for the engineer (or more specifically the Chief Operator) to figure out.

"How come my program was interrupted by an Amber Alert?"
That's a question for someone other than engineering.

Please place all of this in your IMHO file. If it's the round one sitting next to your desk, then so be it.

Thank you.

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Dave Kline - Solder Jockey
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"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology,
in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."
- Carl Sagan