1993 WTC Attack EBS Activation?

[b-turner]

I think weekly tests is overkill. I think way too many people don't take the EAS seriously because of the frequent testing. Once a month and maybe twice a year for what we know the monthly test to be. Equipment is made much better in recent decades.

 

[davideduardo]

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.

This is comparable to the California law that requires a standard notice on any product, food or substance that could, if you bathed in it, ate it in quantity or other wise abused it, cause illness. Now, nearly everything I buy from batteries to some electrical insulation to many computer products have that notice.

Since there is no indication of the severity of the effects or the true potential harm, and so many products have the notice, that I simply ignore them all. The government managed to make a potentially beneficial program totally useless by not having some kind of "severity scale" so you know that casual contact is safe but eating 100 lbs of it is not.

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.

And that is one of the reasons why any system that is fully in the hands of the government has the potential to be politicized.

During the couple of years that we were rather regularly getting storm or danger warnings for places a two-hour drive away from us, I sent a number of communications to county officials. I never got a single response. The ones that are on the local ballot never got my vote again.

 

[davideduardo]

I think weekly tests is overkill. I think way too many people don't take the EAS seriously because of the frequent testing. Once a month and maybe twice a year for what we know the monthly test to be. Equipment is made much better in recent decades.

Good point. My local cable system has its weekly test every single day, and they told me it was done that way "just in case" so they would not be fined or sanctioned. They run it mostly after midnight in the same hour, which is just as out of compliance as not running it at all.

I agree that the test has made people immune to the whole system. And I know many who have been disturbed by cell phone alerts that have turned them all off as best they could, so now they won't even get important messages.

 

[kenglish]

Since the RWT (and RMT) are meant to test not only your own box, but the boxes and associated equipment both upstream and downstream, a once-a-week test isn't that bad an idea. The problem is, no one has a great way to blow off the test when it's not necessary. You don't have to do a weekly test, if you already used the system for an alert, or have a monthly scheduled for that week. Those exercised the system already. You should only run a weekly again, if it failed (or, you're helping someone below you in the chain).
How many times have you seen a weekly test run in the same break as a monthly, or just minutes after an actual alert? Duh! "Tune out time".

 

[Syfy]

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?

Did they say anything about what time it was aired shortly after the bombing or later?

 

[bertie343]

Did they say anything about what time it was aired shortly after the bombing or later?

No, what I quoted is exactly what the Facebook comment stated. ""I was in a taxi and remember the radio stations being taken over by the EBS."

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

I wonder now if that station from upstate NY, WOLF, lost many listeners with indiscriminate test notices.

All earnestness aside, I have to ask how many of you posters on this topic are diligent radio people / engineers / hams / targeted as privy to these uprisings. After two personal decades removed from 26 straight years of radio employment I find all I need to the outside world is a wall phone, a few DX radios, my original two eMails, internet Oldies stations, a laptop with the local Weather Channel app, a $12 wristwatch and a 13 year old car with a decent Chrysler radio. I don't watch much TV at all despite having a nice $50 close-out Radio Shack antenna 'guaranteed' to bring in stations from 90 miles away.

So I really have to give a really great, sweeping tip of the earphones to you folks who are riveted to so much in the way of communications and responsibility.

 

[Theater of My Mind]

A big problem with Amber alerts is that they prioritize one type of incident above all others, including those that may pose a far greater risk.

For example an armed madman or terrorist at large in the community would not rise to the level of sending out an alert even if he were randomly shooting into homes or buildings, but we have to hear about every domestic dispute in the state where one of the parents drives off with the kid. That's not to say it's not important, but so are a lot of other things. Amber alerts disproportionately serve a special interest group and they can be difficult to impossible to opt out of, depending on the platform.

 

[MarcB]

The weekly tests are important. If the station's engineer or another employee is monitoring the station and they notice a a malfunction during the test they can fix it.

I live in Connecticut and one time about 5 or 6 years ago I was out driving around and the station I was listening to did an EAS test. The tones went off. The voice-over mentioned it was only a test. Then the EAS tones played to conclude the test, but the tones were so low that it didn't trigger the station to go back to regular programming and for the next ten minutes or so, the station I was listening to was relaying the music of the station that originated the EAS test. The music was very distorted and quiet. After the ten minutes the EAS tones went off really loudly and that finally triggered the station to go back to regular programming.

There is another station in my market that I listen to. It's a small AM station with an FM translator. Many times I've heard the EAS go off on the station it's so soft you can't even hear what's being said. This is really crazy because if I'm not mistaken their FM sister station is the secondary EAS station in the market. I think in Hartford the main EAS station is WTIC AM/FM and the secondary EAS station is WDRC-FM.

 

[b-turner]

What you are describing Marc B are issues with the set up. From every EAS installation I have seen, the EAS is designed to override the station's audio and it is connected direct to the input line to the transmitter. Certainly in the second instance, they needed an amplifier or preamp between the EAS output and transmitter input.

What likely happened with the first test you describe was a mistake made by the primary station failing to run the end code on the test. It happened to me in Houston. We kept our EAS on automatic, so when the test or activation came in it immediately interrupted my programming and took over. The EAS Alert for a weather event ends and there I am running "News Radio 740, KTR News Time is..." it was a few minutes trying to reach them unsuccessfully before somebody got through and the issue was corrected. It happened a second time with the FM primary but luckily KTRH ran theirs first so when the FM primary went with their alert, my EAS system knew it was the same EAS code so I only heard the audio in the studio. I won't mention the name of the jock, but he had an embarrassing time stumbling over his words getting out a tornado warning to the point he actually cracked himself up at one point. Then he forgot the end tones so we all enjoyed about 10 minutes of his afternoon drive shift before the audio cut.

 

[b-turner]

Here's an idea: how about EAS weekly tests that merely test that primary stations can reach secondary stations: If it works, the printer prints the time and date of receipt for the file the FCC makes you keep but airing the test is optional. The monthly, a different test entirely, should be aired because it's more about the EAS network versus whether your unit is working correctly.

I can tell you EAS equipment is quite reliable. There are the never easy software updates but I only had an issue once in about a decade. The biggest problem I had was my state EAS plan notifying me that they changed primary stations I had to monitor.