Emergency Preparations

[Pete Kemp <kempp@bethel.k12.ct.us>]

Hi Gang,
The following is part of an e-mail passed on to me from a friend. It was 
originated by Paul Harden, NA5N. I thought that the group may find it of 
interest.  This got me thinking, what preparations do the big guys in 
Boston have? How often are they tested? What constitutes a situation worthy 
of program interruption for stations 5 kw and higher? Has EAS taken the 
pressure off, or added to, programming for local/area problems?
I was working the night of the northeast blackout in the mid 60s. We were 
back on the air in four minutes from the transmitter/back-up studio site. 
Not bad for a peanut whistle station. The studios downtown thought that 
emergency lighting consisted of candles and cigarette lighters :)  Quite an 
experience and we kept our listeners informed.
Pete
---------------------
As many of you have probably heard on the news, the majority of New
Mexico went dark saturday. Here in Socorro, NM, brownouts started
around 4:30pm with the line voltage dropping to 70vac, killed my PC,
with the power finally dying about 4:45pm. It was not restored where
I live until about 9pm.
It was unique tuning across the FM band and absolutely nothing was on
the air. Only one AM station was left on the air ... KOB 770AM in
Albuquerque, who took almost 45 minutes before they interupted their
precious ESPN sports gig to inform everyone that virtually the entire
state of NM was in the dark. Pretty shameful service for the only
50KW station in the state. And even then, NO information at all as to
the cause.