Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Spooky excuses from FEMA about 9 November EAS test

The 9 November 2011 EAS test smacks of a government study to see if anyone responds, and their response, given the fact that most are going to be unaware and in for a surprise.

ARRL caught some oddities in the National EAS test announced by FEMA and reports:

“Due to limitations in the EAS, the video test message scroll may not be the same or indicate that ‘This is a test,’ FEMA advised on its website. “This is due to the use of the live EAN code -- the same code that would be used in an actual emergency. The text at the top of the television screen may indicate that an ‘Emergency Action Notification has been issued.’ This notification is used to disseminate a national alert and in this case, the test. In addition, the background image that appears on video screens during an alert may indicate that ‘This is a test,’ but in some instances there might not be an image at all.”

and

The test will last for approximately three minutes; however this may vary across the country. “While state and local EAS messages are limited to two minutes, there is no time limit for national EAS alerts,” FEMA said. “To evaluate whether the system properly interprets the national message code in the national EAS test, the message duration must be longer than two minutes.”

This stinks like a government-run War of the Worlds even with the announcements. Do you really need to run a test based on word of mouth warnings that it's a test ? These are lame excuses.

Computers are programmed by people and given the long advance notice of this, they should have prepared for those not aware of the test (which is likely nearly everyone).


Although local and state components of the EAS are tested on a weekly and monthly basis, there has never been an end-to-end nationwide test of the system. We need to know that the system will work as intended should public safety officials ever need to send an alert or warning to a large region of the United States. Only a complete, top-down test of the EAS can provide an appropriate diagnosis of the system’s performance.

We never did before.

The test smells; despite a Cold War with the USSR, this was never done before.

Why, and why in 2011 ?


Agency planned exercise on Sept. 11 built around a plane crashing into a building
Wed Aug 21, 7:45 PM ET

By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism — it was to be a simulated accident.

Officials at the Chantilly, Virginia-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure.

The agency is about 4 miles (6 kilometers) from the runways of Washington Dulles International Airport.

Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees' ability to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold. No actual plane was to be involved — to simulate the damage from the crash, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building.

"It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility," Haubold said. "As soon as the real world ( news - Y! TV) events began, we canceled the exercise."

Terrorism was to play no role in the exercise, which had been planned for several months, he said.

Adding to the coincidence, American Airlines Flight 77 — the Boeing 767 that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon ( news - web sites) — took off from Dulles at 8:10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 50 minutes before the exercise was to begin. It struck the Pentagon around 9:40 a.m., killing 64 aboard the plane and 125 on the ground.

The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of the nation's spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA ( news - web sites).

After the Sept. 11 attacks, most of the 3,000 people who work at agency headquarters were sent home, save for some essential personnel, Haubold said.

An announcement for an upcoming homeland security conference in Chicago first noted the exercise.

In a promotion for speaker John Fulton, a CIA officer assigned as chief of NRO's strategic gaming division, the announcement says, "On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team ... were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day."

The conference is being run by the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute.

Yes, it was an "incredible coincidence" like the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest on 11 September 9, that started it and the stream of German against Roman anniversary incidents of violence since then and 2001.

You bet I just said that.

SPQR

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