Emergency Notification Systems

This section of our technical library presents articles written about Emergency Alert Systems and Disaster Recovery definitions, terms and related information.

The 911Broadcast emergency notification and alert service can deliver a large number of phone calls using a network of phone systems employing digital phone lines simultaneously. Should a disaster such as a snow storm, wild fire or flood hit your area, 911Broadcast systems can alert your community quickly providing specific instructions if an evacuation is required.

This service is available using our emergency broadcasting systems. If a dangerous chemical spill occurs in your community, you can target specific areas to call. If a severe snow storm hits your area, your community can be notified of school closings or event cancellations.

Mandatory

FCC regulators have taken up the challenge, announcing that the goal now is to design the most efficient -- and mandatory -- transmission of warnings about storms, toxic threats, medical facilities and evacuation routes during all local emergencies.

The transformation may not be cost-intensive. Nearly all stations are already equipped to relay local alerts because equipment necessary to relay presidential alerts also recognizes the codes used for local tornado, fire or missing-child alerts.

Even those stations needing some upgrades would be looking at an expenditure of $300-$5,000.

“Cost is not a factor in stations’ willingness to participate,” says Clay Freinwald, corporate engineer for Entercom Communications and EAS committee chairman for the Society of Broadcast Engineers.

What has been a factor in the past is the system’s penchant for interrupting broadcasts -- annoying viewers with frequent warnings of thunderstorms. Today, nearly 80 percent of local alerts are generated by the National Weather Service, primarily in the “Tornado Alley” of the Midwest and the hurricane-prone states of the Gulf Coast.

But annoying or not, the era of mandatory local alerts is certainly on the horizon.

Beyond the lessons of 9/11, there have been other deadly learning curves at the local level.

In a San Diego County wildfire, sheriff’s deputies began evacuating residents at 11 p.m. the night before, but no one thought to activate EAS for another four hours -- too late to catch more than a handful of TV viewers. Consequently, twelve unwarned citizens died in the fires.

Even though wildfires are a frequent occurrence in southern California, local officials had never before activated broadcast alerts for a fire.

Meanwhile, some observers like Jim Gabbert, who oversees California's Emergency Alert System and serves on a national advisory committee, is glad to see the FCC stepping up to bat. But will it be too little too late, he worries:

“Unfortunately, I think it will take a major catastrophe where hundreds of thousands of people are killed for people to understand what (we) have been saying,” said Jim Gabbert, whose committee has been sounding a strident alarm over the nation’s early warning deficit for the past two years.

Indeed, there is no shortage of critics of the present system – some of whom look to what they percieve as built-in technical deficiencies.

For instance, EAS remains much like it was three decades ago.

A government official triggers the alert system, and radio and TV stations -- along with cable companies -- move to get an emergency message on the airwaves. For instance, during an emergecy, the president records a message to Americans. The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) then transmits the message via telephone lines to 34 pre-chosen radio stations covering 90 percent of the country.

In many states, the systems rely entirely on these designated first-tier radio stations, which broadcast live 24 hours, to interrupt their programs to air digital warning tones with audio messages embedded inside.

Small, so-called second-tier stations can also detect the tones and broadcast them to even smaller third-tier stations. Along the way, the stations are supposed to pull out the messages and air them.

“A lot of people find fault with that and call it a daisy chain,” says Warren Shulz, who oversees the alert system in Illinois. Shulz adds that the multiple-station approach requires the top stations to have a person in the studio all the time and can break down if a disaster like an earthquake cripples the stations in the first tier and the backup second tier.

While some broadcasters have complained that authorities use the system too often, especially for weather warnings and “Amber alerts” about missing children, others occupy the opposite side of the spectrum – maintaining that authorities, including police, fire and emergency-management departments, forget that the alert system even exists.

Shulz thinks that relying on new gadgetry alone would be a mistake:

“Ask the people down in Florida how their cell phones and internet connections are working,” he said. By contrast, he argues, many radio stations can operate on generator power for several days.

For his part, Gabbert wants more federal oversight:

“My biggest concern is that someone on the federal level has to be responsible for the national, state and local alerting system. It can't be different groups in different places running into each other like bumper cars.”

For instance, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency refuses to operate EAS. Instead, the state broadcasters association must run the system on its own. A new federal system could resolve such discrepancies.