Here's what happened in Riverside recently according to a State

OES After Action report.

1) The LP-1 manually relayed an ADR which it should not have.
2) One cable company received the ADR and then automatically
rebroadcast it
over their system because their ENDEC was programmed incorrectly.
3) The Riverside/San Bernardino Local Plan incorporated a typo
that contributed to the initial confusion.
4) The State OES's Monthly test was successfully originated and
was not at fault.

I do not think an "apology" button is the way to go.

One of the residual effects of EBS still lingers in the feeling of
some broadcasters that they are empowered to be the ones to push the
warning button. Unfortunately, Part 11 says this is OK. In my
personal opinion, Broadcasters have no business originating EAS
events. Warning origination is a legal and moral duty of government
entities who are responsible for the consequences of warning
messages. Reports done by the Partnership For Public Warning sent to
NOAA, FEMA, DHS and the FCC back this up.

Broadcast AM, FM, TV and Cable are conduits to the public -- no more
and no less. Taking decisions out of the hands of broadcast
operations personnel would eliminate the perceived need to train
people who, for the most part, have not only no interest in the tasks
relate to EAS, but do not take whatever training there is to heart.
EAS management supervision at stations and cable systems varies from

A ++++ on to letters well down in the alphabet. I have follow-on ideas
on how EAS testing should be handled, but they can wait for another
time or an off line discussion.

Here in California we will be implementing enhanced EDIS; able to
place the responsibility for warning origination squarely on the
government shoulders it should rest on. EDIS can do this rapidly,
reliably and in a very cost effective manner. The station and cable
equipment best suited in my opinion for enhanced EDIS should be
programmed to run in the "relay only" mode.

For the inevitable "Oops" situations, the ABORT button on future EAS
equipment should be designed to stop whatever is happening and
immediately do an EOM code to release any EAS equipment in the hands
of broadcasters or others from relaying the event. With no EOM,
stations that are "captured" are locked in to two minutes of
rebroadcasting the LP they are relaying. For now, until the next
generation of EAS relay boxes for broadcast and cable, experience
should have shown everyone that unplugging an EAS box only makes
things worse.

Apologies should come in the form of news stories for radio and
crawls and news stories for TV and cable; never additional EAS
events. Some EAS devices can be set to do an immediate EOM. In my
opinion we should encourage everyone to take advantage of this
capability if it exists, and train operators to use that button
rather than the knee jerk "pull the plug" solution.

Richard Rudman