Emergency Action Notification

Screen seen on cable TV systems announcing a national test of the Emergency Alert System using the Emergency Action Notification protocol, November 9, 2011

An Emergency Action Notification (SAME code: EAN) is the national activation of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and can only be activated by the President or their representative (i.e. the Vice President).^[1] The Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) also carried the Emergency Action Notification. It has never been used by any President since its creation.

Operation

EAN messages are treated similarly to other EAS messages. When a message is received, the receiver is to open an audio channel to the originating source until the End of Message (EOM) tones are received. After the EOM is received, the station is then allowed to resume normal programming.^{[lower-alpha 1][2]}

The order of broadcast

On participating stations, the following message would be read:

“We interrupt our programming; this is a national emergency.”

After the header codes and attention signal are sent, the participating station reads an introductory script. Emergency messages are then read in this order:

1. Presidential messages, which "take priority over any other message"
2. Local messages
3. State messages
4. National Information Center messages

A standby script is used in the case of there being no new and available information.

The end-of-message codes are transmitted after presidential messages are read. The operator logs the time and date the Emergency Action Notification was received, and monitors their EAS source, awaiting an Emergency Action Termination message.

^[3]

Background

Video slide from a prerecorded announcement of the beginning of an EAN from WGN-TV, Chicago, in 1985, during the period of the Emergency Broadcast System. This EAN announcement was never seen on the airwaves of WGN-TV itself, but was posted to YouTube in March 2017.^[4]

The term "Emergency Action Notification" was created when the Emergency Broadcast System went into place in 1963. Before the mid-1970s, this was the only non-test activation permitted (the same rule also applied to the earlier CONELRAD system). The EAN signifies of a national emergency, as the wording shows. The Office of Civil Defense originally created the term for the national emergency notification enactment. FEMA soon took over after its creation.

Past operation

Unlike other messages, the EAN was not the alert itself, but rather a notice that the activation is beginning.^[5] After the End of Message (EOM) tones were sent, normal programming did not resume. Instead, most stations were to broadcast emergency information in a specific priority order. Messages from the President are always broadcast first. Next comes local messages, statewide and regional messages, and finally national messages not originating from the President.^{[lower-alpha 2][6]} When an EAN was initially received, and during any time a new message was not available, an FCC mandated standby script was used (and repeated).^[7] Other stations, which held special permission from the FCC, would sign off until the end of the EAN.^[8]

Normal programming would not resume until the transmission of an Emergency Action Termination message (SAME code: EAT).^[7]

False alarms

On June 26, 2007, the EAS in Illinois was activated at 7:35 a.m. CDT and issued an Emergency Action Notification message for the United States. This was followed by dead air and then WGN radio (the station designated to simulcast the alert message) being played on almost every television and radio station in the Chicago area and throughout much of Illinois.^[9] Instead of hearing official information, what viewers heard instead was a very confused Spike O'Dell from WGN, who was wondering "what that beeping was all about". The accidental EAS activation was caused when a government contractor installing a new satellite receiver as part of a new national delivery path incorrectly left the receiver connected and wired to the state EOC's EAS transmitter before final closed circuit testing of the new delivery path had been completed.^[10]

On October 24, 2014, television viewers of certain stations in Atlanta, Detroit, and Austin reported seeing EAN messages and notifications that the programming was being interrupted by the White House, despite the fact that there was no real emergency.^[11][12]

References

Notes