Failures Mark First National Test of Emergency Alert System

An anonymous reader writes "The first full-scale test of the National Emergency Alert System failed on Tuesday at 2 PM. Some radio and television networks did not air any alert, while the performance of others was inconsistent. 'Some DirectTV customers reported hearing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" play during the test. Some Comcast subscribers saw their cable boxes turn to QVC before the alert, while Time Warner Cable customers in New York did not see any alert at all.'" If you were tuned to any American broadcaster at the time, did the alert system reach you?

Comments

Spotty

[DrgnDancer]

I was in the car listening to NPR for this. The NPR (WGBH) station did a nice little lead in story and switched smoothly to the test. As soon as it did I started jamming presets and none of the other station I had programmed got the test. Local Alt Rock station, local R&B station, and the other NPR station all failed to broadcast the test as far as I can tell.

Re:Spotty

[Phreakiture]

There are different message priorities. I don't remember what the priority levels are called (it's been about eight years since I've been involved in broadcasting), but the options essentially allow some messages to be stored and rebroadcast later (with a limit on how much later). Higher priority messages go out in real-time; lower priority may be discarded.

The radio station's EAS ENDEC is supposed to manage this for them. In the event of a top-priority message, it just takes over the airwaves in real-time. Middle and lower priority alert the engineer to the situation and let him/her decide when to send the message. If the message is not sent before the time is up, middle-priority messages will seize the transmitter and lower-priority messages will get dropped.

I would expect this message to have been encoded with the middle option -- store it for up to xx minutes, then take action automatically if the station didn't do so voluntarily. This would result in it going out over different stations at different times, and that would be desired outcome.

Re:Spotty

[choprboy]

Came across here at 12:02 MST and the audio stream was screwed up. The audio alerts came thru fine, but the message was extremely faint and unintelligible. About half way thru the 60sec test someone at the radio station cranked the input volume all the way up, horrible high-pitched whine of background noise, but you could at least understand what was being said then. Still, it sounded like trying to tune into a radio station a thousand miles away... The normal monthly tests have never seemed to have that problem.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[0racle]

It is also capable of being used locally, NWS uses it like this. This test was simply the first top to bottom national test of the system, this does not mean national alerting is the only function of the system.

Cox Communications

[ClayJar]

I was watching the test on a friend's Cox Communications cable service, and they also switch to a shopping channel (cable channel 8) for emergency alert activations. Their cable system apparently is incapable of showing the alert on all the (digital?) channels, so they simply show it over analog shopping channel 8 and have a system in place to switch everyone to that channel automatically whenever an alert is triggered. It's a bit annoying if a test is scheduled during, say, an important football game... er... episode of Mythbusters... whatever. On the other hand, it is even more jarring than the alert tones, so you'll certainly know something's afoot.

If you have one of their Motorola digital cable boxes, when it goes into emergency alert mode and auto-switches to analog shopping channel 8 for the message, the front clock display changes to "EAS" as well. If you're suddenly watching the shopping channel and "EAS" is displayed on the cable box *and* you have the wonderfully annoying (and intentionally so) alert tones, you *should* be able to figure out that now's the time to read or listen. At least, that seems to be the general idea.

I did notice that I didn't get the alert over cable until after I'd finished watching it on OTA TV (and chatting about it afterward), so chalk up a minute or two of additional latency to the cable company.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[bws111]

The purpose of EAS is to alert people to take action that can save their lives, not to act as a source of breaking news.

"Incoming missiles! Get to a bomb shelter!" is a valid alert.

"Planes Hijacked!" is worthless. What action that could have been broadcast on EAS would have saved a single life?

Re:Seriously?

[Leebert]

Nonsense. Thousands or tens of thousands could be spared secondary effects from the heat and blast wave. Just the simple act of not standing in front of a window can be the difference between a horrible death and surviving relatively unscathed. Surely you've seen this famous picture from Hiroshima: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_patient's_skin_is_burned_in_a_pattern_corresponding_to_the_dark_portions_of_a_kimono_-_NARA_-_519686.jpg

Yes, if you're sitting at or near the hypocenter, your opinion holds true.

Re:Government failure?

[smpoole7]

>private broadcast companies ... failed ...

Been waiting for people would say that.

The engineer at the local PEP (Primary Entry Point) in our state was standing at the transmitter site, watching the equipment, when the test began. He was on the phone with FEMA, as a matter of fact.

The test never came through. The (FEMA-supplied) equipment never responded. As a result, most of central Alabama never even got the test.

The failure was on THEIR end, not ours. We had done TWO statewide tests just prior to the national one and they worked fine. Don't blame us, dood. :)

Re:Government failure?

[quetwo]

I was at the PEP in our area. The CAP message that FEMA sent out was coded wrong. They sent out the CAP message using the format they dictated last year, not the newer format dictated this summer. Most of the equipment I know threw out any message it did get, and it simply didn't forward it to any downstreams.

Those who supported the backup method of the older EAN system, which they were supposed to foward regardless of the CAP messaging did so.

10136: EAN NATIONAL EMERGENCY ACTION NOTIFICATION 'LP 1(L1)'(MI-TXPEP) ORG=PEP
                'Wed Nov 9 14:03:00 2011 EST' to 'Wed Nov 9 14:18:00 2011 EST'
        Forwarded : 'Wed Nov 9 14:00:34 2011 EST'
                  United States(000000) District of Columbia, DC(011001)

All in all, in our area, we had 1 TV station, 2 radio stations, and 1 cable system (out of 5) that did any type of notification -- wether it came from IPAWS or EAN. That's a failure in my mind, as we were supposed to have our older EAN system as a backup.