May 10, 2005

Present:

Terry Spring-KWPX TV
Ted Buehner-NWS Seattle
Don White-Tribune Television NW
Clay Freinwald-Entercom
Chris Gnore-Bates Student
Allan Steinberg-Bates Student
Roland Robinson-Bates Technical College
Gary Williams-Bates Student
Mark Allen-WSAB
Jim Thorpe-Entercom
Don Miller-WSEM
John Franz-KVOS (phone)
Bob Wyatt-KSPS (phone)

Introductions were made. The FCC was not in attendance because the new administration in Washington has not yet authorized attendance at outside meetings. The committee hopes that this situation changes soon so we can benefit again from the local FCC's expertise and knowledge.

Clay has been in Wisconsin. There are no 24 hour Emergency Operations Centers there. If something happens after hours, someone is paged.

There is a new EAS box on the market. The DASDEC is IP based, Linux controlled and shipping now. See it at www.digitalalertsystems.com.

In Old Business, Oregon has been working on streamlining operations in some of their border areas. Radio waves do not respect political boundaries. Along our common border, they are looking at combining the Pendleton-Tri Cities areas.

Jim is still looking into a back up remailer.

We are looking at the possibility of making the National Weather Service Protocol 10-518 into a new Tab 17. It would have all the NWS alerts with explanations and guidance for use. Ted will get a copy to Roland for editing, who will put it on the remailer for comments.

In New Business, The AMBER alert from McCord AFB on 4/15 was discussed. Nobody seemed happy about it because it did not follow the state guidelines, and therefore should not have been sent. It will be discussed further at the regular AMBER review meeting on 5/24.

A local AMBER plan for Pend Oreille County was approved. The Spokane County plan is still a work in progress.

Spokane is talking more with the counties in Western Montana. They would be tied in with Spokane. There is no EAS plan in Montana and Spokane media, especially TV, is distributed in the Western part of the state. This month, Spokane will be doing a cover in place drill in conjunction with the RMT.

In the North Puget Sound area, there were technical problems with the last local test. They are working on it.

In the Central Puget Sound area, their next meeting is on May 25.

The HazCollect Project at NWS was discussed. This has an internet interface. An alert for a local area can be sent to AWIPS, then to the EAS system via the weather service radios. All alerts would go through NWS, stations would only have to monitor the weather radio. One advantage of the, system is the ability to have wide distribution beyond EAS for different events. There were several questions raised. If there is only one source, where is the redundancy? It was agreed that this should not become the only route to the EAS system. Ted noted that Herb White from the NWS National Office is now leaning toward making HazCollect one of several tools in the EAS Warning toolbox, not the only one.

Don Miller talked about the Integrated Public Alert and Warning Project (IPAWS). This should complement the HazCollect project by allowing the WSEM to have access to the NWS weather radio transmitters. Under the proposed agreement, events that the weather service might not customarily originate could be broadcast over the weather radio system. They would be originated by the state.

Don has also asked Herb White of the NWS to have Washington be a HazCollect demo site. He wants to make sure that the system develops some redundancy so emergency information is disseminated if terrestrial communications systems are down. EM-Net may be an option.

At the National Weather Service, the new weather radio station in the north Puget Sound is progressing. This will fill in some coverage holes in the northwest corner of the state. Alaska had a Tsunami test on 4/1, which went well. Ours will be in September. Other NWS offices are moving closer to implementing the Seattle plan.

The plan to relay the Mason-Thurston local relay net to the state EOC by way of Capital Peak has been implemented. Unfortunately, Grays Harbor is not receivable at that location because there is too much RF at the site. Don is looking for an alternative.

The Washington State Association of broadcasters reported that EAS Summit II will be held 2/25/06 in DC. The Western US EAS Summit will tentatively be held 8/20/05. The notes from the last EAS Summit were submitted to the FCC as a comment on the EAS NPRM. The EAS NPRM is still open. It is a work in progress, but things are happening.

Not a lot is happening at the FCC, and not much is going to happen until then ew Chairman has settled in.

Concern was expressed about the lack of cable participation in the committee. It has been a while since anyone from the cable industry has attended.

Clay reported on what is happening nationally with the Society of Broadcast Engineers. The EAS seminar at the NAB Convention was successful. It lasted a couple of hours. There was participation from the NWS national office and the HazCollect system was discussed. EDIS, the California web based alert and information distribution system was also discussed. It has many good features. See http://www.edis.ca.gov/. Also, Clay has been nominated for the Vice Presidents position at SBE National. If elected, he promised to hand off the SBE EAS functions to somebody else. He is also considering retiring as our SECC Chairman.

The next meeting will be on 7/5 at 9:30 AM at NOAA. Ted will be distributing instructions on how to penetrate their security web before the meeting.

Terry W. Spring
Chief Engineer
KWPX Seattle