First National EAS Test Scheduled for November

The feds have scheduled the first ever national test of the Emergency Alert System. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Communications Commission will conduct the test Wednesday, Nov. 9 at 2 p.m. EST. The duration may last up to three-and-a-half minutes.

A national alert enables the president to break into regular broadcasts and address the American public during emergencies. One has never been issued in the history of the system, established in 1951 by then President Harry Truman during the Cold War. It was then known as CONELRAD and included the capability to jam aircraft homing devices. It was replaced in the 1960s by the Emergency Broadcast System, which in turn was supplanted with the current Emergency Alert System in 1997. “It is important to remember that this is not a pass or fail test, but a chance to establish a baseline for making incremental improvements to the Emergency Alert System with ongoing and future testing,” said Damon Penn, FEMA’s assistant administrator of National Continuity Programs. “It is also important to remember that the Emergency Alert System is one of many tools in our communications toolbox, and we will continue to work on additional channels that can be a lifeline of information for people during an emergency.” The November test is a culmination of more than two years of planning and development. A limited-area test was done in Alaska in January of 2010, with 104 radio stations and 26 TV stations participating. There were points of failure involving audio levels and improperly functioning encoders and decoders. That the hardware is not configured to a single standard complicates matters.