WASHINGTON—With the Aug. 7 National Emergency Alert Test just a couple of weeks away, the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau has come out with a number of guidelines on how participants prepare to improve the accuracy of their reporting.
The suggestions made by the bureau came from problems that were identified during the 2018 nationwide EAS test that impacted accuracy, including outdated software and improper equipment configuration.
The recommendations provided by the bureau ask that EAS participants:
- Review their State EAS Plan monitoring assignments and work with State Emergency Communications Committee to ensure a good signal;
- Correctly identify their EAS designation or function within the EAS. Most common designations are Primary Entry Point (PEP), National Primary (NP), State Primary (SP), Local Primary (LP) and a Participating National (PN);
- Check EAS equipment, making sure software is up to date; that EAS equipment clocks are manually synchronized to the official time provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and that equipment is configured to receive and process the National Program Test code and the “six zeroes” national location code.
The Aug. 7 test is scheduled to take place at 2:20 p.m. ET. A backup date of Aug. 21 is set if needed.
