Harvey Generating Hundreds of EAS and WEA Alerts
Harvey has generated more than 300 emergency alert system messages and wireless emergency alerts since Thursday, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Texas broadcasters -- generally sparing in putting out EAS alerts -- likely won't change that policy in the hurricane's aftermath. Harvey came ashore as a hurricane (see 1708280049) and later was downgraded to a tropical storm.
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Fifteen public safety answering points continue to be affected, the FCC said in a Tuesday update. That's down from 16 Monday. Outages are on the rise for cable and wireline subscribers as flooding continues. The FCC said at least 283,593 subscribers, up from at least 189,487 Monday, are without service. In Aransas County, Texas, 84.2 percent of cell sites are still down, and 73.1 percent are down in Refugio County. A total of 365 cell sites, 4.7 percent of the total, are down across the affected area. One more cell site was down than reported Monday.
FEMA said it doesn't issue the alerts itself but its integrated public alert and warning system (IPAWS) passes them on from alerting authorities for distribution. The agency said 308 WEAs were sent to parts of Texas Thursday through Tuesday morning. Those alerts targeted parts of 59 Texas counties and parts of four Louisiana parishes, including some alerts that targeted areas within both states, FEMA said.
During that time, three EAS messages were sent to parts of Texas via IPAWS, targeting counties north of Houston, FEMA said. It said not all EAS messages come through IPAWS, as state and local authorities can issue messages independently of it. FEMA said its IPAWS office hasn't received any feedback about the efficacy of the alerts and warnings, and no major problems were noted in providing assistance to local emergency management for their alerts.
Most stations program their EAS index to trip when there is a warning instead of a watch, since the National Weather Service issues large numbers of weather event watches, Texas Association of Broadcasters Vice President-Legislative & Regulatory Affairs Michael Schneider told us: "Those happen all the time in Texas." Since warnings are generally about immediate weather events, as opposed to potential ones, events like a hurricane -- with the damage coming over days -- aren't going to generate as many triggers, Schneider said. For Texas broadcasters, alerts generally are used for events like tornadoes or flash flooding or man-made events like hazardous material spills, he said.
Some EAS codes are directly related to hurricanes, but they likely weren't used in the Houston area for Harvey since the hurricane's coming wasn't a surprise, Schneider said. He said Harvey likely won't prompt Texas broadcasters to rethink how they approach dissemination of EAS messages, with the focus to remain on issuing them only for the most dire circumstances so they aren't overused. The worst outcome would be "when it becomes like a car alarm and nobody pays attention to it," Schneider said.
Meanwhile, only about a dozen Houston-area broadcasters were knocked off the air for any amount of time, none of them TV stations, Schneider said. He said one CBS affiliate in the Houston area was flooded and had to evacuate, but it was doing its studio broadcasting from a nearby PBS affiliate. More stations were knocked out in the Corpus Christi area due to winds, he said. As of the latest update, 7 radio stations were down, two less than Monday, and one TV station was offline, up from zero previously.