[EAS] Warning, Again

[Bill Ruck]

Ed,

Yer preachin' to the choir here.

I agree with everything you said.  However, I would stress _TRAINING_. 
Federal partners need to find a way to mandate alerting standards and 
then FUND (!) that training.

My experience in the dispatch world is that they are good people but 
training is expensive and never funded.  To put dispatchers in any 
training class requires somebody else to answer the telephones and 
radios and since most dispatch centers are short handed that means 
overtime.  Somebody has to pay that overtime.

While no system is perfect, the only one that does not rely on 
infrastructure is EAS.

Bill Ruck
Curmudgeon
San Francisco

On 10/2/2020 6:16 PM, Ed Czarnecki wrote:
> A few observations on this:
. . .
> Observation:  alert originators should strive to keep the audio message as close to the textual message as possible.  Alert originator software providers should stress that in their training materials.
> 
> It was also mentioned in this thread that several other jurisdictions still do not utilize the EAS warning channel, despite repeated information about the limits of other systems (WEA, telephone dial out, etc.).
> 
> Observation:  Alert originators need to use all the tools at their disposal, as appropriate for the situation and event.  With fast moving wildfires, which present a very real risk of telephone/internet (VOIP) services being disrupted, I would make the case that EAS is a tool that should be strongly considered.  Alert originators should be reminded of this in their training.  Alert origination systems providers should give more weight to EAS in their product orientation - I understand that that one software provider barely mentions EAS.
> 
> Federal partners (FCC, FEMA) should continue to stress the importance of EAS as a tool - I've heard too many times that the emphasis is more on WEA.  Which is fine, expect for folks like me who turn their mobile phones off when I'm watching TV, or just tired of the text message spam and robocalls, or constantly forget to charge the phone.