For the love of Pete and all that is holy, when will we figure out a safer more reliable system?

Has there ever been a successful alert that was a benefit to the community?

In 22 years of broadcasting, I have never seen or heard of one in this state.

A few weeks ago in Coos Bay, the Tsunami siren went off at 9 pm. It was a malfunction but none the less there was no information released by the authorities. A total of 6 people reacted to the siren and contacted our station for more information. The authorities never once contacted any station in the area to cancel or activate the warning.

It happens again and again, stations comply with the rules while authorities are lacking. Are authorities required to fall under some compliance? It does not seem so.

End of rant...

This is a test. For the next decade or two, your stations will conduct an emergency blow-out of the talent and programming staff. This is only a scheme to produce more profits for faceless corporations and has nothing to do with serving the community. Surely it will work.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

This is a test of the public's brains to see if you notice anything different when programming has been deleted from your radio stations. The broadcast corporations not of your area in voluntary cooperation with the FCC, Congress, NAB and other authorities have developed this system to make more money for the corporations at the expense of service and entertainment to this local community. This is only a test.

Mickel, to answer your question, yes the EAS has been activated at least a couple of times in the last decade during the floods of '96. More recently it's been activated for Amber alerts. Counties can utilize them as well, and iirc it's been activated over in Eastern Oregon in the last couple of years because of flash floods.

Mind you, none of this necessarly means that the system works as advertised, but then what does? Really, it seems more like your gripe should be mostly directed towards the local government goobers, in particular whoever is in charge of Emergency Management in Coos County. Your experience is pretty typical. They may plan for a Tsunami, but they don't plan for a false alarm. Common sense would say, "let everyone know it's a false alarm!" but, as you've discovered, common sense is counter-intuitive for most folks.

Best EAS case in the 14 years I have been in Oregon: the tornado through Vancouver, WA last month!

EAS Tornado Warning from the National Weather Service went out just after the tornado was spotted.

Mikel: how are you involved with EAS planning and improvement in Coos Bay?

Kent: I was heavily involved when it was EBS, 7 years as EAS and then I left radio for 5 years. Back in radio for the last year.

In 1996 during the flooding here, the system failed when the county did not follow SOP. Of course when all the cards fell, radio was to blame.

And lest we forget the 2005 incident. The very reason why Government should not over Governmentize (new word) everything. When that incident wrapped up, the fingers were pointing at radio again but it was the local agencies SOP or lack of it that was the failure.

This latest incident has so angered me, I am jumping in both feet again.

The Tornado in WA was a good instance. It will have been 22 years for me to witness an EAS that worked.

A friend was telling me about an EAS alert that happened in the southern part of the state just a couple weeks ago,during that stormy spell we had.
He said it was the first time he's ever heard it NOT be a test.

I recall KWIP in Dallas staying on all night after a huge storm. This was back in the 80's when they were still an English station. I don't think EAS was activated, but they made an executive decision to bypass the mandated signoff time.

Read more about the Storm of November 13, 1981 and what KWIP did. Written by Eric Norberg, under the heading "Winds of Change"

http://www.acradio.com/INSIDER_ARCHIVE/en010.html

In these days of cluster automation, a real emergency that occurs after regular business hours may not be able to take advantage of the system because there is no one at the station to initiate the first alert. This happened a few years ago somewhere in the midwest when a dam broke and flash floods were imminent and there was no one at any of the radio stations in town to answer the phone (the all night guy with the clipboard watching 5 pc's was not responsible for answering the business line, so he didn't).

Clearly it's not a perfect system, especially since it is heavily dependent on human implementation. Sure, if there are large amounts of time before an impending disaster strikes, it will work, but other than that I wouldn't bet my farm on it.

Somewhat related, this story comes from a friend of mine who is a PIO at a PUD in the Puget Sound area. He was responsible for getting information out during a recent storm when most of the power was out for a long time. Most of the stations he contacted were staffed and was able to broadcast updates, but the area's local station had recently gone automated and broadcast many-hours old information all night. When he wasn't able to contact them by phone, he continued to send updates to the station via fax, but of course no one was at home. I don't know how many calls the station got, but my friend got plenty of angry calls asking why they didn't update citizens.

I suggested that, if the station didn't see fit to staff up during a crisis, that perhaps they should allow local officials (police, utility) a means to record updated information into the station's automation to be aired during a natural break. I'm sure this could be done with passwords etc.

Unorthodox I know, but this situation doesn't quite rise to the level of activating EAS. Since my friend is a former newsperson, professionalism wouldn't be an issue.

Station licensees are the gatekeepers for public information. It's just good local stewardship to keep listeners up to date. And allowing public agencies limited access to the airwaves might be better than nothing, if the stations can't or won't fulfill its role of gatekeeper.

just another, "Great Moment In Broadcasting!"

HeLLLL oOOOO is anybody out there????


Bonk Bonk, hellll oooooo!

The corporations could care less about natural disasters, if it isn't sales, don't call us please, yoooo hooooo!

;-)

Since every broadcasting station and cable company has to do weekly tests, the ratio of tests to alerts will always be at least 10:1.

Broadcasters are really caught in the middle, especially in bigger cities where the powers-that-be prefer to be the sources of information, but don't prioritize EAS. 9/11 in New York City being the most infamous example.

How the states of Oregon and Washington deal with EAS is very different.

For years the state of Oregon had almost no involvement in EAS, while Washington provided EVERY county with an EAS encoder/decoder and sent EAS tests and alerts to them through their state microwave and 2-way network.

Now, Oregon originates tests and alerts from Salem, but through OPB.

Federal, state and local authorities have to prioritize EAS and coordinate with broadcasters and cable companies for the system to work.

Ironically, any national-level alerts will now come via NPR after years of NO connection between the federal authorities and EAS.

3 of the 5 counties in the Portland/Vancouver "Operational Area" can originate EAS alerts.

At the moment, after 11 years of EAS, it works pretty well in Oregon and Washingon.

Kent, you bring up an interesting thought for me, do you know how many counties in Oregon actually have the ability to activate the EAS? I had always assumed that each county was given that authority, but judging by your post it seems that's not the case.

If a given county cannot originate an EAS, how would a countywide alert occur? Do they utilize the old EBS model of going thru an originating station?

Honestly, one of my major complaints with EAS is the horrible quality of the audio. In some cases they can be nearly unitelligible.

Back in the day... UPI and AP had "ringdowns." A bell would "ding" with a significant update. More bells meant more attention was required.

Back in 1971 in the newsroom at Washington State University the three machines were cranking ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk with the door open to the 1st floor hallway. Suddenly, a slow ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding. The dreaded "10 bell ringdown."

People ran in from two floors, knowing the last time this happened was JFK. We all stared in disbelief as the purple type on the yellow paper read "this was a test for KXLY, Spokane."

My idea of utopia would be where every radio station is basically Independently owned because the only people interested in owning them are the truly passionate, talented people who love radio. Sure they could turn a profit and make a living but for some reason, those corporate vulchers aren't interested.....

Oops sorry, wrong probably wrong thread.

The state is divided up into Operational Areas. Each area usually has a Local Primary (LP) station that covers most of the Area.

The State EAS plan lists the Areas and stations at http://www.sbe124.org/or_eas

In Portland, 750 KXL is the LP-1 and 92.3 KGON is the LP-2. Alerts come from the National Weather Service's NOAA Weather Radio transmitter on Goat Mountain at 162.55 MHz, and Clark, Multmomah, and Washington counties can originate alerts through the EAS Local Relay Network on the Stonehenge Tower at 166.25 MHz.

In the Salem area, most of the 911 centers can control the LP station's EAS box through the phone.

Statewide tests and alerts come from Salem and go by 2-way to OPB.

If a county had a OPB station but no LP, in theory they could call up the state and have an alert sent through OPB coded just for their county.

The current approved EAS boxes were developed in 1996 when memory was not cheap, PLUS they wanted it to work over telephone lines and 2-way radios. In my experience, it is REALLY easy to overdrive a 2-way transmitter. Unfortunately, this means the audio gets really compressed, really clipped, or both (like NOAA Weather Radio).

The next version of EAS will probably be IP-based and pass around sound and text files. Plus, every single entity that jumps through the right hoops will be able to originate an EAS alert.

As for EBS over the teletype, everyone working in or listening to the radio on a Saturday morning in 1970 (I think) heard when the guy working at NORAD running the weekly national test put in the wrong punched tape and ran the alert instead of the weekly test.

In my case I was working early at a McDonalds preparing french fries (before they served breakfast or had frozen french fries) and the station I was listening to played only music for 45 minutes as they tried to figure out what to do.

Working at a college radio station at the same time, I remember hearing a bunch of bells from the teletype machine on Christmas Eve as they followed Santa's sleigh over the country.

Kent and all, here's a site you'll like!

Thanks, guy! I had forgotten about that site.

FCC approves emergency alert text-messaging system
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/09/fcc.cell.phone.alert/index.html?eref=rss_tech

Ditto on the thanks Kq4. Never seen that site, but had heard about it. Great!

You're very welcome!