The CGC Communicator Newsletter Web Posting

  ACCIDENTAL EAS ACTIVATION IN SANTA BARBARA AND VENTURA COUNTIES, CALIFORNIA

  (Extracts from various e-mails received by Communications General Corp.)

  ______

MESSAGE ONE - Tue, 27 Jun 2006 14:52:44 PDST

Everyone:

While testing a new installation of the EDIS CapCon system in Santa Barbara, a test which was coded CEM for all of California inadvertently was Broadcast on the Santa Barbara LP1.  The message was aborted a few seconds into the transmission, but not soon enough to stop relay by most stations in the region.  No EOM was broadcast.

This was a TEST, which should not have been broadcast by us.  Please stop all TV scrolls.  Log as a false test activation.

We apologize.

  ______


MESSAGE TWO - Prepared by the same party and addressed to Ben Green at the California Office of Emergency Services - Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:06:55 PDST

Ben:

California State is installing a new statewide system to distribute EDIS information, called CapCon. The system is also capable of activation of the EAS, such as for AMBER alerts.

As part of the installation verification procedure at each site, the technician is required to have the state issue a test messages, including one which is coded for the entire state of California. During installation at the Santa Barbara EAS LP1 station the test message was coded for All of California, effective from 2:29 PM for six hours. The equipment worked properly.

The problem was that the message was coded as a Civil Emergency Message, rather than a closed circuit test. The Santa Barbara LP1 equipment relayed the message until the engineer (undersigned) pulled the plug!  Unfortunately, the digital codes had already been broadcast, so most other stations also relayed the codes. Since the test message was aborted before the voice message, or End of Message digital tones, most stations heard two minutes of the LP1 program audio before timing out.

The Ventura LP1 monitors the Santa Barbara LP1, so the message was relayed in Ventura also.

  ______


MESSAGE THREE - Providing more insight into the situation, this letter was addressed to Bob Gonsett at Communications General Corp. - Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:49:09 PDST

["CEM" means] Civil Emergency Message, which along with EVI (Evacuate Immediate) are the two event codes that local governments use for Emergency Alert System activations.  Amber (CAE) and some others were added later, and not all jurisdictions use them.

My [first] message [14:52 PDST] should have been written more clearly - I wrote it and sent blind copy to everyone I could find in my EAS address book as soon as I realized that the test went out as a CEM, which is a Must Carry message for every radio, TV, and Cable Company in every local EAS Plan.

The CapCon device is a computer (in a tiny box) connected to the Internet at each site (EAS Primary stations now)....  It polls the California EDIS site for emergency messages, including audio files, then stores them on its hard drive.  It also has software to generate the EAS tones and insert the audio, so it can be connected to the station EAS box to relay messages to the public.

As part of the installation verification process, the tech must have the state issue a test message, and verify that the CapCon box responds properly.  The problem was that.... the audio from the CapCon box [was already connected] to our station EAS box.  When the state issued the test message coded as CEM, effective for six hours, for the entire state of California, our EAS box relayed it.  I did not realize that the test had been coded as a CEM (rather than closed circuit test, such as ADR or DMO), until I heard one of our other EAS boxes start a print out, indicating that the message was being broadcast.

To compound the problem, I pulled the power plug (I was behind the rack at the time) to abort the message, so the voice message (which said "This is a test...") did not air, nor did the End Of Message tones.  We reverted to normal programming, so other stations probably rebroadcast the activation tones followed by two minutes (default time-out in the EAS boxes) of our program.

Very bad Public Relations.

Posted by Steve Blodgett
Earthsignals.com