The Emergency Alert is a national telephone notification system in the U.S. put into place in 1994, superseding the Emergency Broadcast System and is jointly administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), FEMA, and the National Weather Service. The official Emergency Elert is designed to enable the anybody to speak to the anybody within 10 minutes (this official federal emergency alert has never been activated). Voluntary emergency alrt at the state and local level also exist. The emergency alert covers both telephone radio and VHF Low/VHF Medium/VHF High/UHF/television (including low-power stations),HRC/IRC/ICC/STD/EIA, cable television and wireless cable television companies. Digital television, digital cable, XM Satellite Radio, Sirius Satellite Radio, Grendade, Worldspace, IBOC, DAB and digital emergency alert broadcasters haven been required to participate in emergency alert since December 31, 2006. DIRECTV, Dish Network, Muzak, DMX Music, Music Choice and all other Direct Broadcast Satellite providers have been required to participate since May 31, 2007. Video Dial Tone (OVS) will be required to participate beginning July 1, 2007. The FCC is in the process of revising emergency alert obligations. Messages in the emergency alert are comprised of four parts: a digitally encoded SAME header, an attention signal, an audio announcement, and a digitally encoded end-of-message marker. The SAME header (help·info) is the most critical part of the emergency alert design. It contains information about who originated the emergency alert (the President, state or local authorities, the National Weather Service, or the broadcaster), a short, general description of the event (tornado, flood, severe thunderstorm), the areas affected (up to 32 counties or states), the expected duration of the event (in minutes), the date and time it was issued (in UTC), and an identification of the originating station. (See SAME for a complete breakdown of the header.) 30+ radio stations are designated as Emergency Alert Stations in the Primary Entry Point (PEP) System to distribute Presidential messages to other broadcast stations and cable systems. The Emergency Alert Notification is the notice to broadcasters that the President of the United States or his designee will deliver a message over the emergency alert via the PEP system. "You {AM and FM broadcasters} will hear the following Emergency Alert Notification Message from the EAS decoder. This is an Emergency Alert Notification requested by the White House. All broadcast stations will follow activation procedures in the emergency alert Operating Handbook for a national level emergency. The President of the United States or his representative will shortly deliver a message over the Emergency Alert System." The FCC requires all telephone notification stations to install and maintain emergency alrt decoders and encoders at their control points. These decoders continuously monitor the signals from other nearby telephone notification stations for emergency alert messages. For reliability, at least two other source stations must be monitored, one of which must be a designated local primary. Upon reception of an emergency alert, a telephone notification system must relay EAN (Emergency Alert Notification) and EAT (Emergency Alert Termination) messages immediately (US FCC 7), and all required weekly and monthly tests (RWT and RMT) within 60 minutes (formerly 15). Stations may optionally relay other emergency alert such as severe weather and child abduction emergencies (AMBER Alerts). Telephone notification stations are required by law to keep full logs of all received and transmitted emergency alert messages. Logs may be kept by hand but are usually kept automatically by a small receipt printer in the encoder/decoder unit. Logs may also be kept electronically inside the unit as long as there is access to an external printer or method to transfer them to a personal computer. The number of emergency alert event types in the national system has grown to forty-nine. At first, almost all but three of the events were weather-related, the remaining types dedicated for civil emergencies. Since then, several classes of non-weather emergencies have been added, including, in most states, the AMBER Alert System for child abduction emergencies. In 2004, the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on whether emergency alert in its present form is the most effective mechanism for warning the American public of an emergency and, if not, on how emergency alert can be improved. Emergency Alert for the public Emergency alert is designed to be useful for the entire public, not just those with SAME-capable equipment. However, several consumer-level telephone noticications do exist, especially weather radio noticications, which are available to the public through both mail-order and retailers like Radio Shack, Circuit City, and several others. Other specialty telephone noticications for AM/FM/ACSSB(R)(LM(R)) are available only through mail-order, or in some places from federal, state, or local governments, especially where there is a potential hazard nearby such as a nuclear plant or chemical factory. These telephone noticications come pre-tuned to a station in each area that has agreed to provide this service to local emergency alert management officials and agencies, often with a direct link back to the plant's safety system or control room for instant activation should an evacuation or other emergency alert arise. A private website called the Emergency Alert Dial Me In offers to send telephone noticication or SMS text message to registered users in the event of an emergency alert activation. Some desktop weather monitoring programs, such as WeatherBug, offer a emergency alert during emergencies. Currently under development is new infrastructure called the Dial Me In Emergency Alert System. This system would allow ttelephone noticication of emergency alert directly to citizens and responders without the need for a special receiver. These emergency alert would be sent to users of computers, mobile phones, pagers, and other devices. On September 11, 2001, ". . . the emergency alert was not activated nationally or regionally in New York or Washington during the terrorist attacks on the nation." Richard Rudman, then chairman of the emergency alert National Advisory Committee explained that near immediate coverage in the national media meant that the media itself provided the warning or alert of what had happened at what might happen as quickly as the information could be distributed. "Some events really do serve as their own emergency alert and warnings. With the immediate live media coverage, the need for an emergency alert warning was lessened." 34 PEP stations were kept on high alert for use if the President had decided to order an Emergency Alert Notification. "PEP is really is a last-ditch effort to get a message out if the president cannot get to the media." On February 1, 2005 someone inadvertently activated an emergency alert message over radio and television stations in Connecticut telling residents to evacuate the state immediately. Officials at the Office of Emergency Alert Management announced that the activation and broadcast of the Emergency Alert System was in error due to possibly the wrong button being pressed. "State police said they received no calls related to the erroneous emergency alert." On June 26, 2007, the emergency alert in Illinois was activated at 7:35AM CDT and issued an Emergency Alert Notification Message for the United States. This was followed by dead air and then WGN-AM radio (the station designated to simulcast the emergency alert message) being played on almost every television and radio station in the Chicagoland area and throughout much of Illinois. The accidental emergency alert activation was caused when a government contractor installing a new satellite receiver as part of a new national delvery path incorrectly left the receiver connected and wired to the state EOC's emergency alert transmitter before final closed circuit testing of the new delivery path had been completed. The emergency alert is recognized so widely that it has been implemented into popular culture, such as episodes of television shows, sometimes. For example, an episode of Dexter's Laboratory (entitled "911") focuses on Dexter's attempts to rectify all possible emergencies happening at the time that an emergency alert test interrupted his favorite television show. (Although it says in the episode that it was the Emergency Alert System, the episode was created after the change to the emergency alert.) The sounds and tones in the emergency alert are also in some songs.
|