[EAS] EAS and WEA usage during the protests/riots/civil unrest

[Dave Kline]

I want to set the record straight by pointing out some errors regarding my original post.
 
Yesterday I did a deep dive into the phone involved.
In doing so, it seems that I may have misspoken in my earlier comments. So allow me to back track to see how I came to my original conclusion.
 
This phone is only used sporadically. We bought it basically just to use as an emergency phone.
A few people have the number but I try to discourage them from calling on this phone. A friend from out of town had been trying to reach me, and called me on this phone. That was on Saturday June 6 at about 12:31 pm. It was that call that was disrupted by the WEA Extreme Alert.
 
Further investigation did not reveal an alert on my phone for that day. But there was an Extreme Alert issued on the day before, Friday June 5. This alert was about the curfew going into effect for the weekend. It was sent just a few minutes prior to the 10 pm curfew start on Friday evening.
 
All of this has now lead me to conclude that the alert I saw on Saturday afternoon, had actually come in on Friday evening, and I had not responded to it. The next use of that phone was to answer the call from my friend on Saturday. A few seconds into that call, the alert popped up on my screen and the other call was disrupted. Apparently the phone stores old alerts until the next time it is used?
 
I also checked for other WEA alerts stored on the phone. The most recent one was a Flash Flood Warning from NWS dated September of 2019. This was a Severe Level alert.  I did recheck my WEA settings and found that some types of alerts were turned on. The choices are: Presidential, Intense, Severe, Spanish and Amber. The first three types were turned on, on my phone. The odd thing is, that we have had other weather warning alerts since last September, and my phone didn't show those.
 
So I will chalk most of this up to cockpit trouble on my part. However, still on the table may be why WEA was used to alert about a curfew and why it was sent as an Intense level alert, when Flash Flood Warnings are Severe level?
 
I apologize for not having all the facts at hand when I first posted about this.
Dave
 

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 12:12 PM Dave Kline <dklinefmtv at gmail.com> wrote:
>This last Saturday, I was on a phone call, when an incoming WEA interrupted the call by disconnecting us. The purpose of the WEA was to remind me that the city had reinstated the curfew for the weekend.
>I received the alert sometime in the afternoon to remind me about an event that did not go into effect until 10 PM that night. What's more frustrating is that I thought I turned off WEA on that phone. I received no such alerts about the previous curfews.

>I question if sending an alert to remind us of something that won't happen for many hours yet, and has no immediate effect to life or property is an appropriate use of the system?

>On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 11:30 AM Ed Czarnecki <ed.czarnecki at digitalalertsystems.com> wrote:
>>FEMA recently posted a factoid regarding EAS/WEA usage during the civil unrest around the country.  They reported that, as of June 4th, 2020, authorities issued 30 EAS alerts, and 155 Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) messages across the United States.  These alerts provided information about curfews, road closures, and public transportation cancellations.

>>I looked through logs sampled from across the country, and it appears that CEM has been the most frequently used event code for these type of informational/warning messages.

>>Ed

>>__________________________________________________________
>>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
>>___________________________________________________________

>--
>-------------------------------------
>Dave Kline - Solder Jockey
>-------------------------------------

--
-------------------------------------
Dave Kline - Solder Jockey
-------------------------------------