[CTRL] Fwd: [cia-drugs] National alert system in disarray

Mon, 28 Jun 2004 08:30:33 -0700

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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector-
Let me guess, this is where FEMA will step in....
 
 
Section: News
PLANNING TEAM MAY DISBAND, CITING LACK OF U.S. ACTION
Group: National alert system in disarray

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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
NEW YORK - The Emergency Alert System was once an unavoidable reminder of Cold War threats, an unearthly buzzing sound that interrupted TV and radio broadcasts and ended with the iconic proclamation "This is only a test."
 
These days, the tests are much shorter, less obtrusive - and easy to miss. But the system, emblematic of the nation's emergency alert network, is a mess, says a group of leading state and local disaster response officials.
 
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials formed the nonprofit Partnership for Public Warning. New threats demanded improved warning systems, they reasoned, networks using the latest technologies to save lives by speeding warnings to cellphones and evacuation maps to handheld computers.
 
Now, frustrated by what they consider the federal government's tortoiselike movement to overhaul warning systems, the partnership may be on the verge of disbanding. It meets today to discuss that option.
 
"One of these days, there will be a terrorism event, or an emergency where a lot of lives could have been saved," said Peter L. Ward, an earthquake warning expert and former chairman of the partnership. "It will be a political scandal. Then billions will be thrown at it."
 
The group was created in the absence of a federal initiative, and its study of national warning systems found shortcomings ranging from an inability to wake sleeping people to a failure to teach citizens what to do if warned.
 
Current warning systems are a sorry patchwork, said Art Botterell, a founding partnership trustee and a former U.S. and California emergency official.
 
The lack of federally mandated standards leaves state and local governments building their own systems without help, and that has led to warning systems that range from well-funded to virtually nonexistent.
 
With little federal funding and few standards, the next generation of warning technology may still come from states, as they create Amber Alert systems for missing children that knit together diverse media and technology so people can get alerts myriad ways including cell phones, e-mail and pagers.
 
Arizona announced a next-generation Amber Alert system in early June; other states are expected to follow later this summer.
 
Warning systems are also fragmented within the federal government, said John Sorensen, a research and development staffer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "There's one system for weather, one for hazardous materials, one for terrorism," he said. "We don't have a comprehensive national warning policy that encompasses all hazards."
 
Among the partnership's suggestions:
 
● Making a single federal agency responsible for issuing warnings and setting technical standards, procedures and education around warnings.
 
● Using such existing technologies as "reverse 911," which can be programmed to call homes in a specific area in an emergency, to send alerts to residences and wireless devices.
 
● A two-year, $10 million warning-reform plan that would include a national warning day when local systems would be tested.
 


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