EAS: Not Even a Glass Half Empty
by Guy Wire
 Radio
World’s Masked Engineer Is Fed Up With the Failings of the
Emergency Alert System
The Emergency Alert System. That morphed version of Conelrad and
EBS held over from the Cold War we love to hate. It’s done
little to assist the public in times of real emergencies except
maybe for tornado and hurricane warnings in some areas. And it has
done even less for broadcasters except burden us with government-mandated
weekly tests, threats of FCC fines for non-compliance, and multiple
layers of confusing codes and procedures only the chief engineer
might understand. Ask any jock what they’d have to do in the
case of a real EAS activation and they probably don’t have
a clue.
Ask any average citizen what EAS is supposed to do and you will
get mostly blank stares or a baffled "EA what"?? Only
a few may actually associate those funny-sounding burps with emergency
test announcements that seem to only test the system. But when actual
emergencies happen, we rarely if ever hear a real activation. Witness
the tragic events of Sept. 11 in New York and Washington or the
earthquakes in Northridge, San Francisco and Seattle. Nada from
EAS. Nuttin’ honey. They got scooped by local broadcasters
acting on their own for all the vital information. The public is
left with a general perception that EAS is not ready for prime time.
Only testing.
READY FOR … TSUNAMIS
Our EAS officials tell us their wonderful system is only for early
warning of
emergencies they can predict. Mostly tornadoes and hurricanes.
Forget anything with a "short fuse" like earthquakes and
terrorist attacks. Apparently once those hit, there is no further
need for the public to be alerted to other related threats. Like
major bridge and road closures, major gas leaks or fires, dams or
large buildings weakened or in peril, hazardous material exposure,
etc. etc. EAS doesn’t even have event codes for civil emergencies
like widespread riots, bombings or terrorist attacks.
Do ya think maybe one of those might happen here in the USA more
often than a "TSW"? For you land lubbers, that’s
a tsunami warning – a Pacific Ocean tidal wave. It’s programmed
in all EAS boxes just itchin’ for action.
And then of course there is the National emergency alert. The president
takes over all electronic media to tell us on the "PEP"
stations of something major that would have widespread impact, like
maybe incoming nukes. Many think this is a relic from the Cold War
and is no longer relevant. But unless the free world gets a handle
on rogue nations and terrorists, it’s not that remote a possibility.
The National alert has never been activated. If it were, only stations
with properly trained operators paying attention or with decoders
wired directly into the air chain would get it. The only people
who would hear or see it would have to have radios or TVs already
turned on to those stations. Sept. 11, 2001, was probably the one
day since EAS and its predecessors were invented that such activation
would have been justified. We were under direct attack on multiple
fronts by insidious terrorists right on our home soil. Many thousands
of people were killed or missing. If nothing else, we needed some
calming reassurance that our government and military were in control
and executing an appropriate defensive response.
MARGINALLY EFFECTIVE
What we have in EAS today is a redundant and marginally effective
system at best for alerting the public of an impending weather emergency.
It prefers to ignore emergencies of other kinds whether local, state
or national. I guess in the minds of EAS gurus, really serious ones
never happen anyway.
But consider just the weather events. There are so many other resources
the public uses and depends on for severe weather warnings. Hurricanes
are tracked with pinpoint precision via high-tech radar and satellites
in full-motion color by the Weather Channel and every local TV station.
As they move towards the United States, hurricanes are the big news
story on every broadcast station for several days in advance. By
the time one gets close, everybody knows.
Tornadoes do have a shorter fuse, but the areas prone to them have
long-standing, well-established local procedures involving local
broadcasters as well as alert sirens to sound the alarm. EAS is
merely adjunct to many of those. It does nothing to alert, protect
or inform anybody after the main event hits.
Most EAS honchos will tell you, "After the alert and first
strike, our job is done. Everybody is listening to radio or watching
TV by then anyway." Not really. That only works for those who
ARE listening or watching when the alert comes down.
Beyond these two major weather events, EAS only gives lip service
to its intended mission. All those other event codes from blizzards
to tsunamis go virtually unused. Several of my engineering comrades
have spent long and tireless hours in meetings with state and local
civil defense and other government officials setting up elaborate
EAS plans, complete with thick three-ring binders of complicated
procedures and rules. Unfortunately, they are the only ones who
even know they exist. Many layers of dust entomb these masterpieces
in every station.
When real emergencies strike, stations mostly ad-lib their own
response, relying on cable and local TV plus satellite news feeds
and all-news radio stations for their information. Civil authorities
sitting in a county courthouse entrusted to oversee and authorize
EAS activation for many local plans are almost always too late to
the party to even matter. They invariably sit on their hands and
never activate.
SHORTCOMINGS
Clearly EAS is well-intended in wanting to provide valuable and
important warning information to the media and the public regarding
emergency events. But it comes up woefully short in fulfilling this
goal in its present form and has left us with a glass not even half
empty. It could be so much more if we really wanted it to be. Neither
broadcasters nor the public have much confidence in its ability
to add anything of value beyond what the weather service and broadcasters
already provide on their own. NWS alert radios provide the same
function for local weather events. Weather radar and/or the Weather
Channel run continuously on TV monitors in many control rooms. EAS
could disappear tomorrow and hardly be missed.
Looking back, Conelrad and EBS were created primarily for early
warning of a nuclear strike. Few stations used EBS for severe weather
events until the Cold War was winding down. EBS was even more pathetic
than EAS and is mostly remembered for the bogus national alert in
1971 everyone ignored anyway. EAS was a step in the right direction
but too many black holes still remain. If we can’t decide to
make it a REAL system, we may as well scrap it altogether and just
use NWS and the other resources we already depend on. At least we’d
be rid of the annoyance of duck farts and incessant testing. Only
in my dreams, I’m afraid.
What’s missing? Why does this inefficient excuse for a government-mandated
emergency information delivery system come up so empty so often?
Why do so few have any confidence in it except for its small cadre
of ardent supporters?
Lot’s of brain power has mused over this for years. Here’s
my take:
PROBLEM SPOTS
First, EAS still entrusts receipt and delivery of its alerts to
mostly low-paid and untrained jox or board ops at the local station
level. Few unattended automated stations trust automatic forwarding
and do not run it for fear of being "burned". Once and
for all, we have got to get the weakest link out of this equation.
Second, it’s only half a system. We do have most broadcast
and civil agencies equipped with an encoder. But nobody else has
a receiver that automatically responds to an alert. Putting EAS
decoding in the hands of the public at large is the missing half.
An entirely new and universal level of alerting would be directed
to those who need it most, free of delayed middleman filtering by
broadcasters.
And third, the authority chain needs to be streamlined to make
activation more effective and quickly executed from designated officials
who are the closest to any given emergency situation.
In the digital age when consumer electronic devices with lots of
features can be mass produced economically, why could we not have
required EAS alert decoding built into every new radio and TV sold?
The public could then receive the alerts directly with automatic
activation of all sets, whether on or off. Millions of folks may
not have a radio or TV turned on, but are within earshot
of one close by. This would be a vitally important enhancement to
sounding the alert for many thousands more people in places like
tornado alley.
CHANCE TO IMPROVE
The coming transition to DAB gives us a golden opportunity to revamp
EAS and its coding scheme to be much more seamless and efficient.
It’s not too late to accommodate a truly modern digital EAS
in the bitstream of a designated emergency subcarrier.
Periodic testing could all be done outside regular programming
with silent coding in this channel. Emergency information would
no longer be filtered or missed altogether through a board op not
paying attention or making the wrong decision. It could be conveyed
automatically and directly from the most appropriate source to the
broadcasters and then launched via this subcarrier that would turn
on all sets and pre-empt any other selected channel.
Such activation could come from the weather service, the president,
the governor, local police or fire officials, the FAA, a nearby
military base commander or even the local all-news station –
whichever designated source or authority is closest to a given serious
emergency condition. This is just one idea and a starting point.
There are no doubt many others that should be considered and refined
by those already involved in EAS in re-planning and re-deploying
a more effective system.
On Sept. 11, we were brutally reminded that we live in an age of
scary possibilities considering what can happen in the realm of
public emergencies. This is likely to be the case for many years
to come. EAS needs to grow up and become more efficient and more
proactive in protecting the public when Mother Nature or our fellow
man threatens us.
The technology to support this effort certainly has grown up and
stands ready. It’s time to start rethinking how to deliver
the emergency mail. It’s time to start re-filling the glass.
Guy Wire is the pseudonym for a veteran radio engineer.
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