Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Re: Emergency Alert System - Full Of Holes

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 13:33:14 -0400

Stan,

Thanks for this pointed article on the Emergency Alert System, and for
your own comments at the bottom.  I am familiar with the extremely
diverse topography of Tucson, Pima County, and the Mount Lemon area, so I
have an idea of the scope of the ongoing fire disaster.

I had met with Craig Fugate at an industry conference during the summer
of 2000.  He is one of the most down-to-earth emergency management
officials I have ever met.  He's got his head on straight, and is
knowledgeable about quite a few aspects of disaster mitigation, not the
least of which is the extensive integration of civilian volunteers
(especially skilled communications personnel) in emergency management. 
When Craig speaks, I always listen carefully.

Kind regards,

Alan Dixon, N3HOE
Contributing Editor
Popular Communications
<[email-masked]>
http://www.qrz.com/database?callsign=N3HOE

--- In [email-masked], "Stan" <[email-masked]> wrote:
Date:  Thu Jun 26, 2003  12:54 pm
Subject:  Emergency Alert System - Full Of Holes

USA TODAY 
Posted 6/16/2003   
  
Warning: Emergency Alert System Full Of Holes

By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY 

A truck transporting a toxic substance turns over on a highway near 
your house. A terrorist's radioactive "dirty bomb" goes off blocks 
from your downtown apartment building. A line of tornadoes is bearing 
down on your church.
 
Warnings of potential terrorism, such as a recent one in Maryland, 
spread quickly. But the nation's system for disseminating alerts is 
outdated.  

How will you be warned right away and told what to do? Chances are 
you won't.

The nation's emergency alert system is broken. And despite frequent 
warnings from federal officials that terrorists could strike again — 
possibly with chemical, biological or radiological weapons of mass 
destruction — little has been done since the attacks of Sept. 11, 
2001, to fix it.

As a result, many Americans risk not knowing about a potentially 
dangerous situation until it's too late to do anything about it.

"If you get warned, it's as much luck as anything else," says Kenneth 
Allen, executive director of the Partnership for Public Warning, an 
organization of government emergency managers and industry 
executives. The partnership is raising concerns about the lack of a 
unified, coherent warning system.

Most Americans have heard the three test beeps associated with the 
Cold War-era Emergency Alert System (formerly the Emergency Broadcast 
System) on their radio or TV.
But experts say that system is functional in only a handful of 
states — and outdated even where it works. It relies on television 
networks and radio broadcasters voluntarily turning over air time to 
government officials in an emergency. But decades after it was 
created, the system is hobbled by outdated equipment and lack of 
local participation.

If the president needed to warn the nation of an impending nuclear 
attack, he would have access to thousands of TV and radio stations to 
do so. But for state and local emergencies, the system is spotty at 
best. Even if the president were to activate the system nationally — 
something no president has done — he would reach only those people 
tuned in to a TV or radio network.

"We live in a much more complex, diverse, mobile society, and we face 
threats that our grandparents never faced," Allen says. "They didn't 
have chemical-truck spills or nuclear accidents or terrorists."

His organization and members of a Federal Communications Commission 
advisory committee say the nation should turn to high-tech solutions 
to warn people about emergencies and suggest how to respond. 
Information could be delivered by telephones, cell phones, pagers and 
computers. Computer chips could be embedded in TVs and radios to make 
them turn on automatically when warnings are broadcast.

"We have the technology. We can do it," says Craig Fugate, director 
of Florida's Division of Emergency Management and chairman of the 
public-warning partnership's board.
He says chips could be installed in all new TV sets for about 50 
cents per chip. But that has never been done because industries worry 
that they would be held liable if the chips failed.

Technological advances would make it possible to alert small groups 
of people to an emergency, such as those living in a 10-block area or 
on a suburban cul-de-sac.
Warning just those affected would reduce panic that might be caused 
by a broad-scale alert.

Weather radios that turn on automatically to broadcast tornado 
warnings are popular in some parts of the country. But less than 10% 
of the population owns them.** 

By Wednesday, the FCC advisory group will vote on suggestions for a 
new high-tech system. Ira Goldstone, the Tribune Co. technology 
coordinator who heads the panel, says he hopes the issue will pick up 
momentum. But no federal agency has taken the lead.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has expressed support for a new 
national warning system, but it has yet to become a top priority. 
Michael Brown, the undersecretary for emergency preparedness and 
response, says the department isn't going to "jump in with both 
feet." He says the public will rely on news media for information 
during major disasters. But he says new technologies will lead to 
better regional warning systems.

Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who is running for president, says that's 
not good enough. The current system "depends on television and radio 
that most people won't hear in the middle of the night when an attack 
could come," he says. "Public warnings save lives, so we have to make 
sure they get to every American."

The Senate tried to include $10 million toward that end in this 
year's budget — a small amount by federal government standards but 
more than enough, experts say, to develop a decent public-warning 
system. But the money was stripped out of the budget.

Some wonder whether the nation needs a new warning system in an age 
of 24-hour news coverage. On and after Sept. 11, for example, 
stations broadcast information from officials around the clock.

"If there was a national crisis, chances are that most radio stations 
and TV stations would put (the president) on," the partnership's 
Allen says. "But if you're watching TNT (Turner Network Television) 
or the shopping channel, you might never know there was something 
going on. I've got 130 channels on my cable network. How many would
broadcast a presidential alert? Maybe 10."

Even if most channels broadcast government warnings, Fugate says, "if 
there's a chemical spill in the middle of the night in your 
neighborhood, you're probably not going to
be watching CNN."

********************************************

** I am the NOAA Weather Radio "monitor" for the Tucson
WXL-30 162.400 mhz transmitter. I let NWS-Tucson know
when the radio is "silent" or if the weekly alert signal
test is working. The local Aspen Wildfire north of Tucson
caused the transmitter to be off-the-air this past week.
NWS-Tucson has no back-up system for this transmitter, nor
any emergency power for the rig.
********************************************
Stan 
www.qrz.com/detail/KC7CJS

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