On a Facebook post remembering yesterday's anniversary of the 1993 WTC bombing someone had mentioned they were in a car listening to the radio and remember the EBS being activated. I had never heard about that happening before. Does anyone know whether that was the case and/or whether an air check exists with it?
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1993 WTC Attack EBS Activation?
- Thread starter bertie343
- Start date
I did not know that the EBS was activated. This is worth trying to confirm, for sure!
I seem to remember passionate discussions on this site or its predecessors about why the EAS was not activated in New York and nationwide. I'm happy to be proven otherwise but as far as I know, no EAS activation happened anywhere. (I was in Ohio, and if the EAS had squawked, what would it have told me to do? Run to a fallout shelter? Stay out of tall buildings?).
As I recall EAS was not activated. I recall rather lengthy discussions on why or why not use EAS. Yes, it was a 'national emergency' but frankly media was on it so fast, even an EAS activation would have been old news. If anything, 9-11 proved EAS to be pretty useless in a national event. Weather warnings and such, it has it's place. I have never understood the child abduction and missing people activations. Certainly all such events do not get an activation. I suppose if I experienced either in my family or among friends, my opinion might change but I relate EAS as getting the word out quickly to the public at large so the public can take action to save their lives and/or property.
I'm pretty sure it was not activated. It wasn't for 9-11, but there were a lot of reasons for that, including that the authorities really didn't know what was happening and where to send people. The 1993 bombing was a lot more limited. New York is so huge. I was in NYC right after 9-11 and I was surprised how unaware people in mid-town were to what was going on downtown. The 93 bombing was even smaller. Having said that, I read where EBS was activated over 20,000 times:
For several years here in the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs to Indio, CA) we'd get EAS notifications of storms in Blythe and in Riverside or Moreno Valley. Blythe is a good 2 hour drive from here, and Riverside well over an hour. All are in Riverside County, though... one of the nation's largest counties.
I know many people complained, there were even local TV news stories about how stupid it was. Finally, towards the end of 2019, they stopped and I have not gotten one of any kind since. Before, I was getting one every month or two for dust storms, flood warnings, fires and the like.
It makes one suspect that the system is not well organized and regionalized. And it sounds like the delegation of the decision process had an encounter with the Peter Principle.
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You'd better get your memory checked. I was in New York for 9/11 and can assure you that everyone in midtown was fully aware of the disaster that was unfolding both on that day and forever afterwards... Unless you're talking about the first few minutes after it happened during the very short time before the initial news reached everyone. Also, while the NYC metro covers a large area, Manhattan is fairly compact and you could see the smoke.
The magnitude of the 1993 bombing wasn't immediately apparent and it's easy to forget there wasn't the same level of awareness about terrorism threats then as there is today. At first it wasn't clear that a bomb had gone off, they were initially thinking of things more like a gas explosion.
EAS/EBS activation is a joke anymore. Radio stations don't bother with it when severe storms are around due to automation. I can remember last summer storms coming through and while the TV stations meteorologists where on the ball, I turned on the radio and heard nary a peep about any severe storms. Last week they popped out an AMBER alert and my damn phone woke me out of a sleep at 3 AM. Bad enough but then they repeated the alert EIGHT freaking times one right after they other. I ended up turning my phone off. Don't get me started on those stupid electronic highway message signs with missing persons alert. With limited space they can't give you much info other than Tan car with XXX1234 plate. What, I'm supposed to pull of the road to write down the plate number? I'm sure as heck not going to remember it otherwise.
EAS is not activated by radio stations; it is the exclusive purview of official agencies ranging from the Presidency on down to local Civil Defense agencies.
Stations have automatic gear that puts alerts on the air (as well as the required tests). It overrides automation and inserts the message into the broadcast. And that is an FCC and Federal Government requirement.
Stations don't have a choice in "bothering with it". They are required to, and it is activated by government authorities, not the station.
If you got too many alerts, or the alert was done at an hour that was inappropriate since 95% of the population would have been sleeping, then you need to report it to the agency in charge of Amber Alerts in your area. It's very likely that, as I have mentioned in other posts, that the person activating the notice in this case was not properly trained... thus the repeated messages.
I heard about the actual happenings shortly after I got off the plane that I was on that aborted a takeoff right at the rotate point when LAX was closed. On my way back home, I talked to people at our NYC stations and they knew about it within minutes as they saw smoke looking down Madison from the old CBS building. Shortly after, then got the first reports of what caused the smoke and were on the air with it... they discontinued all regular programming well into the second day.
But it didn't affect them. Unaffected may have been a better word than unaware. It was pretty much business as usual unless your commute involved passing through the WTC area. I was able to get in and out of the city with no restrictions. Had there been an EBS alert, things would have been shut down. They may have been on that day, but a couple days later, operations in other areas were back to normal. I was able to travel down to the actual site, and get within a couple blocks of it. By that time, the smoke had cleared, but obviously streets were blocked all around it.
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kenglish
Guest
I wish there was a way to have an SDR monitor and record every EAS event (tests and alerts), across the bands....every AM, every FM, every TV and NOAA.... in the market.
That would be interesting.
Stations can opt-out of most alerts. They can be a "non-participating", only having to go off the air in a national emergency. They still have to run the tests.
I sometimes wish the local damaged-freight store had a pallet-load of cheap radios and TV sets. I might set one on every channel, and watch.
The big problem here is, the SLC market is huge. A weather alert (etc) may not affect people in much of the market. Different regions have their own radio stations, but not everyone is listening. Many are listening to translators, and most TV viewers are watching the big city stations, or no "stations" at all. Getting an alert out to the OTA, satellite and Cable TV viewers requires it coming from SLC stations. The counties and small towns can activate their local area, but it would usually only go out on the local radio stations.
People in the south don't care for snow warnings, and people in the north don't care about the south's flash flood watch. There needs to be an addressable system, that can't be defeated, but can be made more palatable. Phones aren't the answer, because we find that many people disable their phone's alerts, or never set them up properly. Too many local governments buy alerting software, like "reverse 9-1-1", but everyone has to subscribe and load provider-specific apps.
The Emergency Alert System really should be a universal, reliable tool for everyone. It needs to be taken seriously.
That would be interesting.
Stations can opt-out of most alerts. They can be a "non-participating", only having to go off the air in a national emergency. They still have to run the tests.
I sometimes wish the local damaged-freight store had a pallet-load of cheap radios and TV sets. I might set one on every channel, and watch.
The big problem here is, the SLC market is huge. A weather alert (etc) may not affect people in much of the market. Different regions have their own radio stations, but not everyone is listening. Many are listening to translators, and most TV viewers are watching the big city stations, or no "stations" at all. Getting an alert out to the OTA, satellite and Cable TV viewers requires it coming from SLC stations. The counties and small towns can activate their local area, but it would usually only go out on the local radio stations.
People in the south don't care for snow warnings, and people in the north don't care about the south's flash flood watch. There needs to be an addressable system, that can't be defeated, but can be made more palatable. Phones aren't the answer, because we find that many people disable their phone's alerts, or never set them up properly. Too many local governments buy alerting software, like "reverse 9-1-1", but everyone has to subscribe and load provider-specific apps.
The Emergency Alert System really should be a universal, reliable tool for everyone. It needs to be taken seriously.
Agreed but a 'silver alert' or 'abducted child' at 2 or 3 in the morning on my phone was enough to put a stop to that after about 3 such instances in several weeks. I'm in Texas, north of Dallas/Fort Worth bordering Oklahoma but alerts were for Beaumont/Port Arthur and San Antonio, both many hours away by car. The EAS needs to be utilized correctly to be taken seriously by the consumer. I suspect most would keep it on their phone if it is done properly. I sure would not be opposed to a tornado warning for my county at 3am, even if I got a repeat 10 minutes later. A flash flood warning 150 miles away at 3am would have me switching iff the notifications. The EAS should be set up when you get the phone, leaving the consumer to do nothing.
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kenglish
Guest
EAS is complicated, and it really requires a lot more training than most authorities give it. The FIPS codes can actually zero in to 1/9 of a county, so there's no reason a Silver Alert for a walk-away couldn't be targeted to a zip-code sized area, or a single county.
AMBER Alerts, on the other hand, are a totally emotional thing. I've had people tell me that every missing child is precious, and every alert should be national. A bit overkill, I think. But, we had a situation a couple of years ago , where a child was kidnapped by a known killer. The alert came from Idaho (iirc), but was sent to several states. It came to us by IPAWS, but wasn't forwarded. It turned out that the chase took the bad guy and victim to a "dead spot" in Arizona, which has to monitor Utah stations for lack of coverage from the Arizona SP station.
Fortunately, the cops were chasing him and didn't lose him in that area.
So, there are lots of different situations, and the most intricate ones seem to always happen at-night-on-a-weekend-during-a-holiday.
AMBER Alerts, on the other hand, are a totally emotional thing. I've had people tell me that every missing child is precious, and every alert should be national. A bit overkill, I think. But, we had a situation a couple of years ago , where a child was kidnapped by a known killer. The alert came from Idaho (iirc), but was sent to several states. It came to us by IPAWS, but wasn't forwarded. It turned out that the chase took the bad guy and victim to a "dead spot" in Arizona, which has to monitor Utah stations for lack of coverage from the Arizona SP station.
Fortunately, the cops were chasing him and didn't lose him in that area.
So, there are lots of different situations, and the most intricate ones seem to always happen at-night-on-a-weekend-during-a-holiday.
i too live in North Texas and get Amber Alerts from other parts of the state, most of the time, the Texas DPS (who oversees the state level Amber Alerts) who issues it on a state level most of the time.
In ‘93, EBS was more manual. If they did, someone at a LP1 likely had to activate it and relay information provided to them. I’m going to guess a simple message to avoid the area or leave the area could have been transmitted. No idea.
On 9-11, everybody had a radio and TV. The Emergency Operations Center also was unfortunately up in the WTC. Probably wasn’t on anybody’s mind to activate EAS since what was happening was on every station everywhere.
We had riots here in Kenosha, WI last year. The police department as far as I know never used their local EAS abilities on radio and TV. Last year, theyused it to activate the radio and cable systems’ EAS systems with a message telling people about a curfew. They were focusing mostly on issuing the cell phone alerts. Now every few months they actually test everything. The sirens, the radio and TV EAS, the mobile alerts, etc all get tested here.
Some areas during disasters call the NWS office and ask them to activate it via NOAA Weather Radio.
On 9-11, everybody had a radio and TV. The Emergency Operations Center also was unfortunately up in the WTC. Probably wasn’t on anybody’s mind to activate EAS since what was happening was on every station everywhere.
We had riots here in Kenosha, WI last year. The police department as far as I know never used their local EAS abilities on radio and TV. Last year, theyused it to activate the radio and cable systems’ EAS systems with a message telling people about a curfew. They were focusing mostly on issuing the cell phone alerts. Now every few months they actually test everything. The sirens, the radio and TV EAS, the mobile alerts, etc all get tested here.
Some areas during disasters call the NWS office and ask them to activate it via NOAA Weather Radio.
I fully agree with others here that the alerts can be a valuable, useful and important tool, but for the most part aren't managed properly. The biggest danger IMO is that there's so much "crying wolf" and overuse of the system, that people may disregard serious alerts when there really is an "emergency" and a true need to activate it. A few years ago I got a new phone and it was set to "opt in" to Amber Alerts. One night I was wrenched awake at 3:30 am by the tones and an alert for a missing child - 3 counties and about 1 1/2 hours away. Something similar happened about a week later, at which point I disabled them.
When Covid first became a thing, they shut down all bars, clubs and restaurants here except for takeout and delivery and imposed a 10 pm curfew. The county EMA planned to send EAS alerts to cell phones every other night to reinforce the curfew. The county mayor who was running for state senate wanted the alerts to say they came from his office instead of the EMA so people would see his name, think he cared and would vote for him, so it became political. Regardless, after 2 alerts in 3 days, they proved so unpopular and confusing that they stopped sending them. On the Friday of the 3 day Memorial Day weekend, they decided to send an EAS alert to phones so visitors from out of town would see and understand the Covid restrictions. I was in a park when that one was sent. Most everyone got the tones on their phones, immediately looked to see what the "emergency" was, and there was mostly eye rolling before putting their phones away in disinterest.
When Covid first became a thing, they shut down all bars, clubs and restaurants here except for takeout and delivery and imposed a 10 pm curfew. The county EMA planned to send EAS alerts to cell phones every other night to reinforce the curfew. The county mayor who was running for state senate wanted the alerts to say they came from his office instead of the EMA so people would see his name, think he cared and would vote for him, so it became political. Regardless, after 2 alerts in 3 days, they proved so unpopular and confusing that they stopped sending them. On the Friday of the 3 day Memorial Day weekend, they decided to send an EAS alert to phones so visitors from out of town would see and understand the Covid restrictions. I was in a park when that one was sent. Most everyone got the tones on their phones, immediately looked to see what the "emergency" was, and there was mostly eye rolling before putting their phones away in disinterest.
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I'm in Knoxville and I regularly get Amber Alerts for Memphis, which is about 6 hours away. We just had a tragic local case where an Amber Alert was issued for.a child who was not reported missing for 2 months after the fact....her remains were found a month or so later and the mother is awaiting trial for her murder.
The time I know of that the Amber Alert system really worked was when an idiot murdered his wife, took their child and drove to Ohio. A regional Amber Alert was issued and lo and behold someone on Ohio heard it on the radio and realized they were following the car with Tennessee plates in question. The child was recovered and the father is in prison.
The time I know of that the Amber Alert system really worked was when an idiot murdered his wife, took their child and drove to Ohio. A regional Amber Alert was issued and lo and behold someone on Ohio heard it on the radio and realized they were following the car with Tennessee plates in question. The child was recovered and the father is in prison.
And that automatic gear is useless unless it is programmed correctly. Besides the EAN, NPT, RWT and RMT messages, which are mandated by the FCC, the EAS equipment can be set to ignore everything else, including short-fuse weather alerts such as TOW (tornado warning) which pose an immediate threat to life and property.
EAS is only as useful as station owners and local or regional emergency management committees want it to be, and in all too many cases, it’s the once-a-week on-air annoyance and is otherwise off everyone’s radar. When done right, it is a huge asset in disseminating emergency information. The absence of that information can have serious, even tragic, consequences.
As we’ve seen in some of the other posts here, EAS can also be misused.
Again, aside from the four message codes cited above, there is no requirement to respond to or relay any other messages.
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