Early Returns Show Nationwide EAS Test Went Smoothly, With Few Hiccups
The second-ever nationwide test of the emergency alert system Wednesday (see 1609270058) went smoothly, according to early results, as expected (see 1609130060). That indicates the system of relying on a combination of Common Alerting Protocol and daisy-chained stations to disseminate the alert is reliable, EAS officials, broadcasters and equipment makers told us Wednesday. Some stations took longer than others to broadcast the alert and some didn't do so at all, but those errors were infrequent and scattered, and didn't occur to an unexpected degree, said Ed Czarnecki, senior director-strategy and government affairs at EAS gear maker Monroe Electronics. The first nationwide EAS test in 2011 had several issues.
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“There's 25,000 EAS participants -- statistically, there's going to be some glitches,” Czarnecki said. “This is a great time to find those out” rather than in a real emergency, Czarnecki said. The FCC, which helped oversee the test with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, didn't comment Wednesday. A spokesman said a statement on the test may be released Thursday.
Tuesday, the FCC announced a staggered schedule nationwide for stations to submit their early reports on the test -- those reports had previously all been due at midnight. The FCC didn't comment on the reason for the schedule change. More detailed test reports will be submitted in November, and will lead to further information being released, an FCC spokesman told us. FEMA didn't comment.
Most stations seemed to take roughly 30 seconds to broadcast the alert, though some took seconds or minutes longer, said Czarnecki and Maine Association of Broadcasters CEO Suzanne Goucher. The delays were likely caused by errors in setting up or updating the equipment for the new nationwide location code and test code, they told us. Manufacturers released a slew of updates in the lead-up to the test, Czarnecki said. Stations that didn't broadcast the test may have similar errors, or may not have upgraded their equipment as the FCC required, he said.
Officials knew some aspects of the last nationwide EAS test in 2011 (see 1607180062) had gone awry as soon as the test code went out, said Goucher, who chairs the Joint NAB-National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations EAS Committee. In 2011, an audio error caused the emergency message to loop, creating an echo effect that led to the message not being passed on by some stations. That didn't happen this time, Goucher said. Many stations picked up the alert through the electronically delivered FEMA Integrated Public Alert Warning System, while others received it from other stations, numerous EAS officials said. That redundancy was put in place to prevent the problems uncovered in 2011, EAS officials have told us.
Whether a station's broadcast of the alert was triggered by IPAWS or an upstream daisy-chained station depended on how frequently the stations' equipment is set to check IPAWS for an alert, said Mark Manuelian, chairman of Massachusetts emergency communications committee and engineering manager at WBZ(AM) Boston. If an alert from an upstream station in the daisy chain were received during the 30- to 60-second interval between electronic “polls” of IPAWS, it would trigger the alert, and the electronic alert triggers if it is received before the broadcast alert transmitted by other stations.
That redundant system may have created issues for stations seeking to broadcast alerts in Spanish, Nevada State EAS Chairwoman Adrienne Abbott told us. Bilingual alerts were one of the new features being tried in Wednesday's test, but the Spanish alerts could be triggered only though the IPAWs system. All the stations under Abbott's purview that would have broadcast the alert in Spanish happen to have been activated by upstream stations in the daisy chain, and so they had to broadcast the alerts in English as they were received from other stations. The rules for emergency alerts don't allow stations to hold an alert, Abbott said. Some stations did successfully deliver Spanish-language alerts, Czarnecki said.