The CGC Communicator Newsletter Web Posting

Following is a letter of June 29, 2006 from J. D. Strahler, Santa Barbara LECC Chair, concerning the Santa Barbara/Ventura, CA "EAS Incident" of June 27, 2006.  The letter is addressed to "EAS Participants" and is reproduced here with permission.


On 2006 June 27 at 2:29 PM the Local Primary station for Santa Barbara County broadcast an EAS activation coded as "A Civil Authority has issued a Civil Emergency Message for all of California, effective from 2:29 PM until 8:29 PM."  There were EBS tones, but no voice message, and no End Of Message code.

This message was originated by California state, and was intended to be a closed circuit test of a new state emergency alert distribution system (CapCom).  Unfortunately, the CapCom and EAS equipment was fully functional at the Santa Barbara LP station, so the CEM (a must carry code) was relayed.

As a result of this unplanned broadcast of what should have been a closed circuit test, the CapCon vendor has changed the test procedure to not use the CEM code.

Most radio stations in this region do not have personnel monitoring their EAS equipment 24/7, so they auto relay EAS messages which meet the criteria specified in the Local EAS Plan.  This is what SHOULD have happened at those stations:

The EAS activation would have been received from the LP1 station, and the codes verified as "must carry," the time correct, and "all of California" as being within the local region.  The station EAS equipment should have started recording the voice message (in this case, the normal music program audio of the originating LP1 station).  After two minutes the EAS box should have sensed that there was no End Of Message signal, so stopped recording.

If no one aborted the above, then the station EAS box should have interrupted program, sent the EAS activation tones, two minutes of the LP1's music program, then the EOM, before returning to normal program.

For TV and Cable TV the same sequence should have occurred.  However, the TV/Cable operator should have monitored the audio to prepare the FCC required text scroll of the content of the voice announcement for the hearing impaired.  It should have been obvious that there was no emergency message, so the operator should have aborted the alert.

Although not intended, this false "test" identified problems with equipment set-up at several facilities.  Since this message was coded for all of California, it should have been relayed statewide.  The Ventura county LP1 did relay the message.  At some facilities the FIPS code for "all of California" was ignored by the EAS decoder. At some TV/Cable companies the normal program was not restored after the two minute time out.  Note that in Santa Barbara there was no EOM from the LP1, but in Ventura the LP1 added the EOM after the two minute time out.

Please review the sequence of events at your facility to verify that the equipment is set-up to relay the Event Codes specified in the EAS Local Plan, for all pertinent FIPS codes, including the nine sub-divisions of your county, the entire state of California, and Nation.

For more information concerning EDIS, and how you can receive incident updates, go to <http://www.incident.com>.

Posted by Steve Blodgett
Earthsignals.com