Nationwide Test in September Will Show 2011 Issues Addressed, EAS Officials Say
A nationwide test of the emergency alert system planned for Sept. 28 is expected to show that problems revealed by the 2011 test have been addressed, said broadcast, EAS and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials in interviews Monday. The FCC Public Safety Bureau and FEMA announced the test in a public notice Monday. Planning for it has been going on for years, officials told us.
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The test will be the first national use of a new national test code, a new nationwide location EAS code, new test reporting methods, and bilingual EAS messages in Spanish and English, officials told us. “The test will provide an opportunity to evaluate this and other measures that the FCC has adopted to address issues identified in connection with the 2011 Nationwide EAS Test,” said the Public Safety Bureau in the PN. Fixing problems with EAS is “exactly why we do these tests,” said Maine Association of Broadcasters CEO Suzanne Goucher, who chairs the Joint NAB-National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations EAS Committee.
Broadcasters “are ready,” and are working with local, state and federal partners to make sure the test is successful, said an NAB spokesman. Broadcasters are working on “getting up to speed” with the test’s reporting system, an industry attorney said. The FCC and FEMA didn’t comment.
The September test will use both the FEMA Integrated Public Alert Warning System and the primary entry point system of daisy chained stations, and should avoid an audio error that caused the emergency message to loop during the 2011 test, a FEMA IPAWS official told us. “We expect the audio quality to be much clearer,” the official said. “The nationwide test will assess the reliability and effectiveness of the EAS, with a particular emphasis on testing FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System,” the PN said.
Using the national periodic test code (NPT) for the test in September will spare broadcasters, FEMA and the FCC from having to create messaging for viewers to make it clear that the test doesn’t reflect a real emergency, Goucher said. The 2011 test used an emergency action notification, the code used by the president for nationwide emergencies. Since that code doesn’t include any notification that it's part of a test, it required special communication efforts to avoid false alarms. The NPT, created by the FCC since the 2011 test, will avoid such problems since it will be indistinguishable to consumers from a normal EAS test, Goucher said. The NPT uses the familiar “This is a test ...” language, she said.
The September test also uses a new nationwide location code, a FEMA IPAWS official told us. The previous test was spread nationwide by individually including location codes for each state, but the September test will use a new code that denotes the whole U.S., officials told us. Though the NPT has been tested regionally for several years, the nationwide location code hasn't been, the FEMA official told us. Not all EAS equipment manufacturers have updated their equipment for the new code, though there's a July 31 deadline to do so, an EAS official told us.
During the 2011 test, Alaska had to drop out of the test because of a real storm emergency, Goucher said. Under the nationwide code, it won’t be possible for individual states to drop out of the test, so a real emergency on Sept. 28 likely would lead to a cancellation, she said. That’s a concern because the September test date is in the middle of Atlantic hurricane season, Goucher said. The PN sets Oct. 5 as an alternative test date for that eventuality, she said.
The test's bilingual aspect will allow networks that broadcast primarily in Spanish to run a Spanish-language version of the emergency test message, the PN said. “FEMA’s alert will be transmitted in English and Spanish and include both audio and the text of the test message, which can be used to populate an accessible video crawl,” the PN said. “These improvements will help ensure that all members of the public, including non-English speakers and individuals with disabilities, will receive emergency information.”
The new EAS test reporting system also will get its first trial during the nationwide test, FEMA and EAS officials told us. The system is meant to provide more reliable and useful data and be more resistant to crashing, the FEMA official said. “All EAS Participants are reminded that they are required to register with ETRS and must complete the filing of ETRS Form One on or before August 26,” the PN said. EAS participants must file “day of test” information before midnight Sept. 28, and post-test data by Nov.14, the PN said.