THE BUSINESS OF ALERTING THE PUBLIC IN EMERGENCIES

NATIONWIDE TEST OF THE EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM ON OCT 4

An EAS Flash Flood Warning was carried on thousands of radios and TV sets during the State Fair. That’s good! And the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) that was issued at the same time appeared on thousands of cell phones. Again, good news.

But not everybody got the warning.  Warning and alerting systems aren’t as simple as you might think simply because not everybody is watching TV or listening to the radio. While it may seem like everybody carries a cell phone, users can control whether to allow those messages to come through.

Nonetheless, your station’s active participation in the NM EAS system is of the vital importance. Let’s take a look at how other warning systems complement your broadcast alerts.

First, EAS on radio and TV.  EAS provides lots of wide area coverage, but only members of the public who’re watching TV stations or listening to the radio get these EAS alerts. Anyone watching Internet sources like YouTube or non-cable streaming video won’t get EAS alerts, nor will anyone listening to Spotify or any other non-broadcast sources.  This has become a real problem for alerting officials.  Plus, with very few exceptions, the EAS system is “voluntary,” in that stations have wide discretion as to what alerts to carry and may not carry all EAS warning events.  WEA and reverse 911 attempt to solve this problem but have a few difficulties of their own.

WEA alerts on cell phones can reach thousands of members of the public who may not be within earshot of a radio or TV set. WEA alerts can be geographically sent to virtually any desired area, so anyone outside of the warning area doesn’t get nuisance events. The problem here is that WEA alerts go to the areas where cell phones are registered, not to where the phone and the person carrying it happens to be at the moment.  This means that a visitor to New Mexico from out-of-state may be in a warn area but won’t get the alert. Or, in the case of a New Mexico resident on vacation, their cell phone may carry the WEA alert for a New Mexico alerting area even though they’re on vacation, for example, in Disneyland!

Enter reverse 911 alerting. Great idea with its own real problem. The latest figures I’ve seen indicate that only 27% of homes still have a landline.  Reverse 911 can call landline numbers in a geographically defined area. However the reverse 911 has no idea where cell phone users are. The remedy for this problem is to have cell phone users register with local law enforcement to become part of the reverse 911 database. This registration is optional and is up to the cell phone user. Most don’t bother, or at the very least don’t know they must register.

Each of the three systems has distinct advantages and disadvantages.  They’re complementary to each other, and all three are necessary for public warning.

But what about sirens? Sirens are a blunt instrument and won’t work in New Mexico. Because fast-moving natural disasters could be a variety of things in New Mexico – flash floods, wildfires, even tornados. If sirens have only one designation of disaster, everyone who can hear the sirens knows in advance what the sound of the sirens means. But in practice, all they can tell you is that something’s going on, but not what that is. Hawaii’s Lahaina firestorm and devastation highlighted the drawback of using sirens. In Hawaii where tsunamis are indeed emergencies, alerting officials decided not to trigger the siren warning system as they felt the sirens would be interpreted as a tsunami warning, driving citizens of Lahaina right into the fire’s path. In this case, both using and not using the sirens were problems for the town!

Nonetheless, sirens can be useful in alerting the public to tune in local radio or TV to learn what an alert is. The public needs to know that when sirens wail, don’t just look outside to see what’s going on – tune in radio and TV for EAS messages. After all, while all alerting systems have value, only radio and TV can provide detailed, continuously changing emergency information to a public at risk. Yes, our EAS system is the best, and now is a great time for us to make sure the public knows it! The upcoming October 4th National Periodic EAS Test, now known as the Nationwide Test of the Emergency Alert System, is a great place for us all to start!

Your participation in the New Mexico EAS system is very, very valuable!! Let’s tell everybody!