STATE
OF WASHINGTON
EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM
Approved by the
Federal Communications Commission, March
3, 1997
May 14 , 2008
Present: Terry Spring-KWPX; Ken Dahl-Amateur Radio; Clay Freinwald-Commercial Radio; Ted Buehner-NWS Seattle; Don Miller-Washington Emergency Management Department
Via Phone: Bob Wyatt-KSPS Spokane; Tyree Wilde-NWS Portland; Stephanie Day-Kirkland Office of Emergency Management; Dan Good-ESCA; Mark-Snohomish County; Arthur Willetts-Daystar; Lacey Croco-King County OEM; Dennis Hull-NWS Pendleton
Introductions were made and the minutes from the previous meeting were approved.
The yearly EAS Summit will be held in Washington DC on May 19. This will consist of panel discussions and behind the scenes political maneuvering. They will be working on standardization for implementing the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) to provide interoperability between different pieces of equipment. The new EAS boxes will be upgradable to whatever the standard will be in the future.
The EAS remailer was down the week of 5/5, but it is back to normal now.
When there is a problem with an EAS test, here is the procedure to follow. Send a message to the remailer. Include as much information as possible. Indicate the source of the message and whatever else is relevant. It is helpful to know if anyone else has the problem. You can attach print outs from the remailer to your EAS logs to explain discrepancies. Broadcast stations need to receive two tests and originate a message weekly to meet FCC requirements. Stations have been fined by the feds for not meeting this requirement.
The local chair in the Tri Cities retired, and a replacement is being sought. We also need a local chair in the North Puget Sound area and a representative from the cable industry. We need more people involved in the committee. Please pass the word. We especially need more broadcasters and cable people.
Mark Allen is still working on a draft set of bylaws for the SECC. They are based on what was done in Idaho. They will be posted on the remailer for comments. This is an action item for the next meeting.
Phil Johnson has been working with the state AMBER committee to address issues with the recent activations.
Phil has also net with the new King County Emergency Management Director, Mr. Robin Friedman. He is supportive of EAS. He has also been visiting EOC's in the Central Puget Sound area, and has found and corrected several ENDEC issues. The City of Seattle found and corrected an audio problem in the new EOC which caused problems in a recent test. Kitsap County is now communicating with the LECC. And Phil and Clay will conduct training in Jefferson County on May 28.
The CAP roll out is progressing. Don Miller will continue to send out updates to Emergency Managers and the remailer. The boxes are getting to the stations. At some point, all stations will need one.
The April RMT was sent with the wrong originators code, which caused a problem some places because of the way their boxes were programmed. The problem has been fixed. Broadcast stations are the last resort for originating emergency messages, so EAS boxes should be programmed to relay messages from all originators.
There was no May RMT in the North Puget Sound area. The local area should investigate. It was relayed by the NWS weather radio. Possibly there is a reception problem up there.
In Eastern Washington, the RMT originated by Kootenai County went fine. They are working on a major flood activation plan.
At the National Weather Service, Warning Coordination Meteorologist Ted Buehner has been working on an activation plan for major high winds. Criteria is needed for EAS activation. This was tabled. There is the climatic and then there is the political wind speed. This should be in place by the winter storm season.
The new Upper Cowlitz weather radio station went on the air on April 14, and will be in test mode for 30 days. They are working on improving the audio feed to the transmitter to make it more reliable. A TFT 940A has been added to the Seattle office to increase the number of inputs to the system.
There are some new EAS products. See http://www.trilithiceas.com/. For the new blue Sage see http://www.sagealertingsystems.com/index.htm.
The Amateur Radio community is working towards repeating AMBER alerts on amateur radio repeaters.
The next meeting will be on July 9 at 9:30 AM at Camp Murray.
Terry Spring
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