Re: What happened to Amber Alert?

["Aaron 'Bishop' Read" <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 11:05 PM 10/14/2002, tklaundry@juno.com wrote:
>Just curious, IIRC Acting Gov Jane Swift wanted to have the Amber Alert 
>system up and running in Massachusetts by October 1, that was 2 weeks 
>ago.  Anyone know the status?
>df


It's up and running...more or less.

Mark Manuelian (of Infinity/CBS/WBZ) is the EAS guru there and has been 
busting his hump to work with the State Police, Beacon Hill and the local 
broadcasters to get it running...he deserves much kudos for it.

Last I checked, they're using the CEM (Civil Emergency) code as a 
substitute for AMBER until all EAS en/decs have been updated so that they 
have AMBER codes (some manufacturers, Burk among them, have not released a 
firmware update yet, but are promising to do so very soon...before 
Halloween in many cases).

I've been told there's some debate over this since CEM is really meant to 
be for something else entirely (riots, really bad accidents that close a 
freeway, terrorist attack-related chaos, etc)...and before Sept. 11th I'd 
have just said "bah" to that argument as, to my knowledge, a CEM alert has 
never been sent in New England, much less Massachusetts.  But these days I 
do have to wonder...

Anyways, since updates to all EAS co/decs are supposedly going to be 
available by the end of the year, and I believe all stations are expected 
to update ASAP...although I don't know if there's a rule about being 
required to install updates.  You'd think there is but who knows for 
sure?   I do know that most stations WANT to update as this update also 
includes provisions for delaying the forwarding of a weekly or monthly test 
(RWT and RMT) from only 15 minutes to a full 60 minutes...so it behooves a 
lot of stations who've been griping about the small time window to legally 
forward tests and alerts.



_________________________________________________________
Aaron "Bishop" Read       aread@speakeasy.net
Fried Bagels Consulting   www.friedbagels.com
AOL-IM: ReadAaron         Brighton, MA 02135