good morning this is an important hearing almost every american is familiar with this scenario you're watching television and suddenly the television program is interrupted a beeping sound comes you see the multi colored stripes across the screen and then you hear this is a test of the emergency alert system the e a s you breathe a sigh ridley's let me leave because it is only a test but during any given year thousands of citizens across our country hear an emergency broadcast on their radios or on television advising them that they have a few minutes to seek appropriate shelves or because for example a tornado is or to evacuated the area because a hurricane is arriving in a few hours the federal emergency management agency or fema is responsible for administering the national and state local governments may use the e a s on an as available basis broadcast station because this patient is voluntary but of course most to do given the high number of natural disasters and our country each and every year probably ninety percent of all messages and one hundred percent of all federal messages are disseminated by the e a s is generated by president bush issued executive order thirty one three four zero seven directing the department of homeland security to modernize and integrate the nation's public warning systems thema then version of the e a s system e a s messages will continue to be transmitted but in addition must today include the modern technology convene and says that almost every american  owns including pagers cell phones computers and other personal communication devices and this is a big task fema began working on a plan to update the e s system in part by conducting pilot programs nationwide with i pause pilot projects coming to an end however many stakeholders are expressing frustration that the ipod's program does not have a clear plan and timeline for finishing the various tasks that still need to be completed several states and localities have begun modernizing their own systems in the absence of federal guidance and consensus stakeholders include state and local governments and various private sector groups the government accounting office as suggested the theme or hold some stake holder forums on the challenges of integrating the system and various other issues at the meetings the stakeholders perhaps could produce some clearly defined deliverables such as for example the common alerting protocol or cap a standardized format for use in all types of message or lurks a public also is entitled to a clear timetable as to when a final decision or action  be completed many stakeholders point to the commercial mobile service alert advisory committee process set out in the warning alert and response network act we call six it seems that members of the call of include federal state local and tribal governments members of the private sector and people with disabilities they are charged w providing recommendations on technical requirements standards regulations and other matters needed to support the transmittal of emergency alert by a commercial mobile providers to their thousand and eight that once the system is in place that agency will now serve as the federal aggregator and gateway for the nationwide commercial mobile alert system i appreciate the meetings with tween them staff and the committee staff regarding their expansive legislative authority for public alerts and warnings in the stafford act we must remember that we are modernizing and integrating the public alerts and warning systems that can make the difference between living and dying for the nation's citizens when a parent here's an alert on the radio and have a few minutes to get our children into a cellar before the tornado strikes we are reminded that this alert and warning system must be robust more readily available and truly modern this subcommittee is committed to assisting family and making the public alert and warning system much better and the best no less will do these to welcome all of the witnesses day witnesses today and look forward to their testimony and i asked the ranking member of he has an opening statement thank you madam chair for holding this hearing on the state of our public alert and warning systems i was on thank all of our witnesses for being here today and for their efforts to approve improve our le morning capabilities i know they have the best interest of the american people at heart and i very much appreciate your service quite frankly i think this is one of the most important hearings we've held in congress and chair far too many people are dying in disasters that could have been avoided with effective warning system in the first five months of this year alone and one over one hundred people were killed by tornadoes in the south and the midwest and in my home state of missouri this is simply unacceptable we live in a country with two hundred fifty million wireless subscribers yet rely on cold war era alert system to warn people of life and death situations unless you live in a state that has decided to create its own modern alert system you probably need to be sitting in front of the t v or listening to the radio to receive emergency alert given their mobile lives this is not good enough we need to modernize our aging system so government officials can get the right message to the right people at the right time to save lives there's no excuse for the lack of effective warnings to the public technology already exists and a great cable satellite digital and wireless capabilities into a system that allows local officials to geographically target lifesaving warnings in less than a minute however there no plan to use or integrated what we're missing is clear federal leadership not mandates but leadership to drive a consensus among the stakeholders about the standards and protocols who will use to build this system if ema fails to lead us to the next generation of alert systems then i believe we will end up with a patchwork of state and local systems that can't communicate with each other we're on the verge of repeating the same mistakes we made with radios or neighboring jurisdictions and police and fire can't to one another to avoid such a mess i introduced the integrated public alert and warning system modernization act last month chairwoman ordered our bill clarify leadership and accountability in require a road map for developing a modern alert system reaches people quickly and effectively so far there has been some effort to examine improve portions of the current system in june two thousand and six the president issued an executive order directing the department of homeland security to take the necessary steps of great our alert system as a result the federal emergency management agency established integrated public alert and morning system also known as i pods and i told her two thousand and six congress enacted the warning alert in response network or warn act that directed the federal federal communications commission of the f c c to establish an advisory committee and f c c order to develop the commercial mobile services component of i pause however to date the may has not provided a clear leadership provided clear leadership to develop the system architecture or plan to tie the elements of an integrated system together in fact the recent controversy over themas reassessment of its authorities and role as the federal coordinator for aggregator of this cause numerous stakeholders to question famous commitment to the i pause effort themas decision last week to assume the federal aggregator role is significant and i'm glad fema is back on board however little progress will be made alert protocol standard and a clear consensus plan to integrate all of the moving parts of our pos there are also serious questions about the reliability of the existing relay system used to  two thousand and seven fema conducted a nationwide emergency alert system test three of the primary entry points stations designed to transmit the alert to other broadcast stations failed to receive an retransmit miller there are also unresolved questions about how state and local officials can and should use the future i pod system we must keep in mind that ninety eight percent of all alerts are local and then i pods must meet their needs for faster targeted alerts given the slow and confusing pa states and localities are moving forward with their own systems to meet the needs of their citizens i can't blame the stage for moving ahead without female it increases the risk that local alert systems will not be compatible in the end we want to ensure that all americans have the capability to receive alerts and warnings regarding disasters through as many modes of communication as possible and that is the intent behind the bill that we've introduced again i want to thank chairman norton and our witnesses today your testimony is going to help us today madam chair as you are aware that i have committed myself during one hundred tenth congress to ensuring a proper state of readiness at fema particularly in light of past tragedies that this nation of suffered because there are situations that we will undoubtedly face again in the future the american people deserve the best and most efficient public alert system so that they will have the time the direction and the resources to protect themselves and their families throughout our history the american people have proven that they are capable of an amazing capacity to survive endure and succeed in a challenge especially when i give it a fighting chance madam chair i'm interested to hear the testimony of our witnesses today particularly with respect to the pod system and how it affects the present emergency alert system e a s pennsylvania developed its own e a s plan and file that with the f c c on april first two thousand and four and i'm interested to learn from our witnesses here  their thoughts on whether i pause will be conclude soon and the implications that it might have for states like pennsylvania states that have existing plants i believe that we dodged a bullet during the hurricane and severe storm season of two thousand six two thousand and seven but this season storms already in the plains have been much more severe much more aggressive and led to an enormous loss of life already as my desire that fema not find itself again overwhelmed as it had been the last time the natural and terrorists disasters in the second panel i guess today we've got larry king his emergency manager from hillsborough county it's not my district but ranking member and chair for their bill h r sixty thirty eight which does require the federal government to upgrade the nation's alert and warning system now i don't know what it's going to take i come from a district that's been hit by hurricanes floods fires tornadoes i think we've had everything but the locusts and heaven forbid we should have a achieve adequate warning for the public somehow we either lack the legislative will or the administrative ability to get the job done and i'm only works if you have a radio turned that's pretty pitiful statement that we don't have a better system in place the tornadoes that we had in central florida back in two thousand and seven killed several dozen folks it starts at three o'clock in the morning and we did not have an adequate warning system and we've seen also the  an adequate c adequacy of some systems particularly in the rural areas are areas where there's longer distances and some of the traditional types of warning systems g s just do not work that is i said we today i look forward to working with mrs norton mr graves to come up with the solution and whatever they can craft that will do the job i want them to know that i'll be supportive of so thank you and you know back thank you mr miko i want to welcome our first witness now captain james judkins junior of norfolk virginia and which is a part of the division of emergency management misjudgments i want to particularly thank you for driving one understand more miles for hours here and that traffic really appreciate because while we have very informed representatives from the emergency management association i always like the hearings to have a person who's on the ground right now who's had experiences with what we're talking about so we potentially value their testimony and we'll receive it now thank you madam chair distinguished members of the committee appreciate the opportunity to share with you some stories that happened on the twenty eighth of april when a f three tornado impacted the city of suffolk virginia and that's the worst natural disaster that's affected our marshall that were impacted forty nine of those were totally wiped out but in the aftermath no one lost their lives only six people required hospitalization and leaving the rest of them the just to be treated by the paramedics in the field in the hospital emergency rooms and the local urgent care centers i have several stories i'd like to share with you that are responders in our news media gleaned from the those people involved in the first case goes like this when the afternoon of the storm a resident of the hill point farm subdivision was on his way home in his pickup truck when he heard the river heard on his radio what he described as several e a s activation alerts specific for the city of suffolk he immediately cellphone his wife and advised her to watch the skies and take cover in the hallway if he happens to spot a funnel cloud a little while later he received a frantic call from his wife that was huddled in the downstairs hallway as the twister roared outside and severely damaged their house in the second case i had the radio on states this one lady and i heard them talking about a tornado approaching i thought we don't have to worry about that the man of the house was upstairs working on his computer the wife was downstairs looking out the window in a moment later there was nothing but debris in the air suddenly the glass in the house began to break in within seconds the husband and wife found each other and ducked into a closet as they watched their house come apart all around them pictures blew off the walls mattresses tumbled down the hall and lamps were sucked out the windows in case number three upon hearing the weather alert on television this family took cover in a small half bath on the second floor the walls and window most of the rooms next to and below the bathroom were blasted away by the twisters force case number four a grandmother reports she's still shaken from what is described as a horrifying experience the senior citizen who breeze with the aid of portable oxygen was sitting in her home's south facing sun room with her sister and moved to heed a televised weather warning they had only gotten a few steps into the interior hallway before the twister struck their home case number five first responders reported this story that of a grandmother and her granddaughter who literally wrote out the storm in a bathtub in that account upon hearing the warning the grandmother and child took cover in their bathroom grasping each other clutching each other as a nestled themselves in the tornado level their home and tossed the tub with its precious contents in a nearby lake case six this case is personal to me because it involves my mother and my aunt my aunt was terminally ill  my mother was caring for her they were watching television when the weather alert sounded specific information for the community in which they live the subdivision which there they live were broadcast mom managed to get my aunt and herself into the interior hallway just as the rear of the home was torn away and finally case seven spring athletics are underway in the city of suffolk at this time the teams are on their respective practice feels when the school officials receive the tornado warning the all know all hazards weather radio the athletes were directed to the school's interior hallways for refuge and each of these seven cases there are two common factors the first and most remarkable and most important to me is the fact that no one was seriously injured or died and secondly those life saving measures that each one of those people took were prompted by an emergency alert system message in my twenty eight plus years experience i find that there's no perfect alert system sirens will fail either mechanically or nowadays it fails because people with their portable listening devices can hear on the close a music is  radios for an unexplained reason get turned off because they're ignored by the weekly test they have and they turn him off more and more people find themselves watching satellite radio listening and listening to satellite radio and watching satellite said that you can lead a mule the water but you can't force him to drink the same thing applies i feel to warning systems each of us has a responsibility to our families for their safety and well being and that responsibility includes knowing your community's warning systems and having a method to receive those emergency messages i thank you for your time well thank you very much mrs jenkins knows exactly the kind of  the e s a the a f works well when the radio the television a certain radio or television is on as most commercial radio sets on that and it's not on like sa it works well if you had it on  but you indicated that if you didn't happen to have you already on which you had a cell phone you have to pre register and of course that's because not everybody wants a cell phone that their cell phone number known in your community do but it is there as a system as we have in some communities i think here in the district of columbia where telephone inside the home can rain and in advance with a warning the only system that we have in the city is what we call reverse nine one one and you've got to pretty well program the numbers an area that you want to respond it's an older reverse nine one one system so it's limited by outgoing phone lines the newer nine one one systems are internet based therefore you get more messages out quicker but they still have to define an area that you have so that it takes time to set up an outgoing message like that in my office i have the ability to use what we call cable voice override which i can from any any phone i can send out an emergency message and override whatever whatever channel the are our residence or listen to regardless of what channel it is all that has to so those have been programmed in the audio that's what it the way that works i've got a phone number to dial in and to get it through registered well all that they have a scribe to a number bank from our local phone provider which is the rise and now the downfall of that if you've got an unlisted phone number then your number is not in that bank that you that you get from the phone company and then you have to agree geographically set up the area in which you want the call was with r and it and it takes time it's there other systems are out there were that work a lot faster  but still you have to set up the drip geographic area even with the internet based system it a blast it calls out really fast but it still takes time to set up that that area in which you want to call when we get in differences between systems you know i'm almost driven back to saying with somebody just have a whistle that blows last community back in the day somehow that whistle was understood i mean  i'm i'm hearing what you're saying i wonder if improvements in the e a s are the way to do this do you think that the e a s could accommodate and all that you have said with with  different modes of communication sound the peoples of god to some lady owned some that require the jurisdiction to have programmed in the numbers all the rest do you think we can design and e a s system is truly universal i think with the technology we have we definitely it's capable and the with the number of cell phones out there that's definitely a good way to push it out home telephones  if you like maybe you let the answering machine gets that so you will be bothered with telemarketers but again i'd just like to revert back to there's absolutely positively no one hundred percent way to get the message out we just we have to do a good job to get the message out to as many people as we can and educate our people that it is our responsibility to try to be on the lookout for those messages especially if if we know severe weather is threatening our area thank you i'm going to go next to  six counties in it three of them are suburban and the rest of it's extraordinarily rural and we would go through the motions every time we would have a warning go out we'd all show up down to fire department and we would get the trucks out in the police cars would participate and we drive up and down the streets blown the sirens and hoping that people got the message at play that's still in place today and then we would we would also kind of initiate a ad hoc calling tree you know you call your family and then you call your startling the difference in you know casualties at night as opposed to say during the day when people might be paying attention but it seems to me like and i know the technology is there because we do it in a district like mine we do a lot of tele town hall meetings  and we launch them from whether it's i'm in district or out here and and d c will watch thirty five thirty six thousand calls in one evening instantly to folks throughout the district and you know if they pick  up they come on board but regardless they look and to our pre recorded message and then i come on the line and then we take questions we do the whole thing but we do instantly launch thirty thirty six thousand calls and i live in a county that only has seven thousand people in it and would seem to me like you know that techno i know the technology is there we just have to get it in place but my question to you is the three what are the three challenges that you see right now in developing a system that that works nationwide and obviously chairman norton myself we we represent completely different district she has a very urban district i have a very rural district and that's the reason i think it's a perfect match introducing this bill together because because between the two of us we've got to be able to cover cover everybody out there and take care of them but what do you three see as the three major challenges for districts such as the chairman's and mine which is  from the legislatures getting buy in from the broadcasters getting brian for the from the folks that that run the communications systems whatever they be and the third the third thing probably maybe  depending upon how we wind up pushing this out the third thing is be getting buy in from the citizens making it again they've got to be willing to hear the message if it's voluntarily probably some some may do it some may not but if it's something that's go pushed then then that's something that probably will work and then there's the challenge of the type of messages if you put every weather alert message that's generated by no weather radio there's a people get really irritated get woke up at three o'clock system is the best simply because in a lot of cases at least in the rural areas you know if you lose a line because the you know because the tornado or the storm is still still ahead of you you know you end up losing  line the lights go out and electricity goes out but the phone is still working and quite frankly very few people in my district in the rural parts have cable anyway so even being able to integrate a cable system you know is going to make it tough to make but i would agree that it we're undertaking but we want to remember all of the there's a lot of aspects out there but a lot of aspects in getting that message out but i think people would be very interested in and then by and i think at least from the public is going to be there and the buy in from some of the media is going to be a little bit tougher thanks man and i just have a couple of questions i actually represent a district much like mr graves extremely rural part of north east and central pennsylvania fact i'm either blast or down to not even have cell service at my house appreciate that frankly but occasionally it seems like it might be an awfully useful tool and inclement weather from your perspective what is the most effective way to get messages out from from your experience of what you've heard from your colleagues around the country well right now our my locality is pretty much like yours were rules flash urban a large portion of our city is still farm community so usually when we have an event like we experienced in april the first thing the media guys want to shove a microphone you face is why don't you have sirens well how many fires would you think it would take to cover four hundred thirty square miles you know and then there's all the frailties of the sovereign system so as it stands right now with the technology that we currently have in place i feel that that would be a toss up between oil has its radius basically because if you happen to get one of the newer models that that's got the local code program you don't get irritated by hearing your neighbors weather and get awakened by messages you don't want and that's one of the one of the issues that i put out to the people that i do outreach for and force the next best system the probably that's out there right now some of your systems that localities can purchase they're very expensive but they can blast a lot of messages out a lot of people very quickly they're internet based and you  can place the numbers in by purchase telephone a list of the locals subscribers you get a lot of messages that quick but again that's this is very expensive in localities a lot like mine just do not have the emergency management budget to take anything like that it's true that's true i was also intrigued by your comment of folks listening to satellite radio now those subscription rates are through the ceiling and that hurt servility to hear broadcasts of warnings is there a way and  frankly i don't know the answer to this is there a way the can interrupt the satellite broadcast to this issue a message issue a warning well i'm not electronics garou but with the technology folks we have of the world today i would  y be a way that real challenge would be able to get the message to the area in which you would want to go in some localities directv also have the reception for local channels some technology along that line might work for that but you would have to have something within the system that would that would be able to pull in that local message so people would be hearing all the messages for all of the country or all over that particular coverage area for that satellite system know all of them don't the majority do i can can safely say that the major t v stations all participate and that's where we get most of our coverage of the majority of the radio stations do but not all of begin again because it is a voluntary system for local messages but we know that matter of fact the tornado that we had the other day that's how i got the message i was out of the office and i heard the s on my vehicle radio and paid to have a radio station with people listening and they didn't hear it on my radio station but my neighbor did my neighbor went for cover and i did and so i'm i'm interested in that but we'll find out about that  alert method of choice for the nuclear power plants for what for the surrey nuclear power plants and therefore north anna and the other nuclear power plants to serve service the commonwealth yeah they're also backed up by a and keep in mind also there's a number of the rule jurisdictions across the commonwealth are still used sirens still or volunteer firefighters so then it becomes the question as to what is a siren going off mean is that a far or is it alerted and you can it is the technical well first you talk about the sirens you know imagine getting to everybody's cell phone right some cell phones work some places not they drop calls at eight to depend they may not use cell phones as often as they do in big cities i just don't know why we would abandon that technology instead of having everybody these understand the standard for example in a tornado i'm here talking about things where there's a flash you know there's a hurricane usually have some morning but i must say they've had tornado warnings even here recently and the whole point there and of course the radio is very good and a lot of false positives and that's fine but when you talk about some way you better get yourself together in three seconds i don't understand just getting yourself to  cover much less picking up the phone here and what it's all about seems to me that particularly for certain kinds of certain kinds of events  events that might be almost immediate like tornadoes i don't know why i wouldn't want to hear a siren rather than you know not being near a cell phone or  even one of of these were verse nine one calls i just song i'm just don't know why i would not want to rely on them at all particularly since it looks like this is going to be universal any time soon and even if it is it depends upon you having the technology that telephone the radio it has to be on the cell phone has to be where you can pick it up  i can understand that for hurricane most our games don't come upon us without some warning even katrina had warning but i am worried about events for which there is little warning i must say some of those when you your own case studies but all those people happen to have the radio or the television on the net yes maybe they just luckily had had their communication device there some of the military bases that are experimenting with it actually purchased and installed a a loudspeaker t system it's unbelievably clear and that can put out messages to a large areas of the unbelievably clear signal i saw a demonstration at one of the conferences hours attending a while back and that's that's a solution that possibly could be used and in smaller communities where you've got a lot of people come together where you're actually hearing a message you know what to do you know how long you've got to do it but far flung area i'm not particularly interested in how to quickly reach people now recognise it we're not even if we were talking about a terrorist alert we probably we're not talking about you know so i've kind of the bomb that's usually not the way even wars or enemies fighting longer but the my is more about natural disasters in a bank thing else because that's what we we we we get we get to over depend upon people listening for the alert we forget that there are people who love silence don't have anything on their people and and and hospitals where there may be not be radios and where silence is valued there are people in libraries so i  you know i'm always skeptical but particularly skeptical about making this universally appear and be virtually effective want to call them the next witnesses major general martha she arraigned will retire lou is the assistant administrator at fame of the national community program direct and chief derrick k ward she is of public safety and homeland security bureau of the f c c however i do want to no good morning madam chairman ranking member graves members of the subcommittee i'm martha rainville the assists administrator for a famous national continuity program directorate and i want to thank you for this opportunity to share with you this morning the progress that beam is making with the integrated alert public alert and morning system the emergency alert system has served us well but it is based on technology that's about fifteen years old through i paused fema and our partners are transforming the alert system from an audio only signal that sent all radios and televisions as we discussed earlier to one that can support audio video text and data alert messages sent to residential telephones websites pagers e mail accounts and to cell phones the mission of the i pods program is simply to send one message over more channels to more people at all times and places my written testimony which has been submitted for the record  lays out in detail first the importance of interagency cooperation and public private partnership in improving the nation's alert and warning system lessons affirmed there are two thousand seven pilot programs in the gulf states and also the administration the national weather service and the federal communications commission to ensure the court nation of effort when it comes to upgrading improving and securing integrated public alerts and mornings we also coordinate extensively with others such as the primary interest point advisory committee and the association of public television stations on system upgrades congress allocated funds in the fiscal year two thousand and five katrina supplemental that enabled us to deploy a suite of new alert warning capabilities and mississippi louisiana and alabama during the hurricane season zero seven so for the first time the state emergency management officials had the ability to send alerts by american sign language video to residents who are deaf or hard of hearing and to send prerecorded messages in spanish to residents who did not speak english these successful pilots ended in december of two thousand and seven on schedule and since then through the state homeland security program grants them a continues to support state and local governments seeking to improve their alert capabilities and in fiscal years two thousand and six and two thousand and seven twenty seven states received more than a billion through this program which includes an eligible category to support alert systems this year famous taking steps to improve alert and warning infrastructure and to increase the dependability of the national system first we're strengthening the federal government's ability to send emergency warnings directly to the american people by increasing the primary in true point stations from thirty six to sixty three this will enable federal warnings to reach eighty five percent of the american public directly up from seventy percent currently second we're increasing the survivability and resilience of the national alert and warning system digital e a s digital e a s adds the direct transmission of voice video or text alerts to stations across the country over the p b s satellite network it will also allow the distribution of alerts in multiple languages and later this summer female rollout digital e a s into the eight states and one territory that participated in a previous pilot the states are alabama alaska florida louisiana mississippi new jersey texas south carolina and puerto rico will also expand digital e a s beyond these original nine locations to five more locations this year third we're increasing the capacity of the national alert system by incorporating noah's infrastructure into the i pods architecture through noah's national network i pods gains another redundant  path to state and local entities broadcasters and the public and finally as announced on may twenty seventh by administration policy and fema will assume the federal aggregator gateway role for cellular mobile alerts and we'll work with v h s science and technology to develop test and integrate the technical solution and with f c c to make the alert aggregator operational our goal is to ensure that the president can send an alert to the public during an all hazards of vent and to support capabilities chosen by state and local officials and together with our partners we will ensure that i pods is reliable resilient and secure so thank you madam chairwoman the ranking member grace and others for this opportunity to tell you what the most doing the bipods thank you  granville ms folks good morning chair norton ranking member graves and members of the house subcommittee on economic development public buildings and emergency management thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on  half of the federal communications commission to discuss our efforts to develop a robust and reliable emergency alert system and to establish a commercial mobile alert system otherwise known as the c mass as required by the warning alert and response network that the commission efforts are consistent with the goal of h r six zero three eight legislation introduced by ranking member grazing co sponsored by chiefs chair norton which is improve the ability to alert the red of the united states of all potential hazards under all conditions i will briefly summarize the commission efforts in these areas to date for over fifty years of us have had a mechanism in place to deliver alerts to the american public particularly for the president communicate with the public in the event of a national emergency that system the e a s requires e f participants including radio television and cable systems to deliver emergency alert to the public the f c c continues to enhance the manner in which this alerting warning system takes advantage of new technologies for example in two thousand and five the commission expanded the scope of e a s to include digital broadcast radio and television digital cable and satellite radio and television last year the commission expanded the e a s to include internet protocol based video programming services offered by wireline telephone companies the commission has taken steps to ensure more robust and reliable next generation e a s last year the commission required the participants to have the capability to receive common alerting protocol formatted e a s alerts no later than one hundred eighty days after fema publishes the cap technical standards and requirements and receive commission approval for state plan that describes how such alerts will be transmitted the commission has also taken steps to establish a commercial mobile alert system pursuant to the war next under the statute the commission was required to undertake a  actions with just within type that to tory deadlines i'm pleased to report that the commission has met all of us want to deadlines to date first the commission was required to establish in convene an advisory committee to recommend technical requirements by which commercial mobile service or s providers could voluntarily transmit emergency alert the commission established an advisory committee the commercial mobile service alerted visors committee consistent consisting of a balance or a of experts as required by the morning the committee held its first and our learning system under which a federally administered alert aggregator would aggregate all senate cave alerts received from federal state tribal and local government the alerts would then be sent to an alert gateway which would proceed process the alert into a ninety character format that could be sent to  pleased to report that the commission released its first report an order adopting those record requirements by the statutorily required date the commission's order generally adopted the advisory committees recommendations including its into in the math architecture proposal the f c c also providers in addition the order adopted rules require participating c m s providers to transmit three classes of emergency alert presidential imminent threat such as tornado or hurricane warning and amber alerts to target alerts at areas in the larger than the county that will dress the best ways to ensure that non english speaking americans and those with disabilities are able to receive alerts and edition during the summer the commission will adopt rules that among other things address the process by which the in providers must be let whether they will transmit alerts over the the commission will continue to coordinate with all stakeholders on alert warning issues the commission looks forward to continuing to work with same up on a yes or c m s issues and stands ready to support them an implementation of h r six zero three eight should it be enacted thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today this concludes my testimony and i would be pleased to answer any questions chief porches also included additional information on e a s and the math in his written testimony thank you most folks can i ask you both if there were a need for a national emergency alert today can you assure us that the public would receive it in time i ask each of you station monthly so we feel confident that that can get through to seventy percent currently until we add the other pet stations this year and then eighty five percent directly through the paps but then the pets cascade the message down through a chain to local stations so the states are responsible for the for that piece of it but we feel confident through the message is going out through no i and others that reach ninety eight percent of the public that we could also get an e a met  message out clearly there's a need to modernize and upgrade the system to add redundancy to add resiliency to it on to add layers of alerts and methods of alerts to the current system because as you said earlier not everyone is watching television or listening to the radio misspoke from the f c c as perspective we continue to do everything that we serve they can to ensure that communications service providers upon receiving the alert are able to transmit it out so that the public gets it in a timely fashion we do this through required monthly and weekly testing of the emergency alert system which requires which requires participation by  us participant we've also taken steps to prepare participants for next generation emergency alerts emergency alert system in the context of the ma we have been working with the industry working with steam and others to ensure that that cell mobile alerting system will be able to receive and transmit alerts in a timely fashion were so you know again the commission certainly is doing everything that it can to ensure that the participants are seen mass participants will be able to send out the alert in a very timely fashion well i ask are recommended such forums simply to inform the agency the way we're being informed this morning are any such forums going on are they planned thank you for that question because one of the most important lessons from the pilots on the gulf last year was that one solution won't work for everybody and that states have to have different needs and different best ways of alerting their populations and we need to listen to the states to the emergency managers much like the captain we had here this morning so that we get it right and whatever our solution is we are informally meeting with state emergency managers to the pima regions we are working with i am in other groups to get their feedback but we will be sending up a formal group and an advisory group if you will that will work  to make sure that to inform the i pod's program we haven't determined the membership yet we're actually working with i am to help us with that with a p t s and p b s as well so informally we have i want to get it formally established that we have a standing advisory group what's been lost because of the delay here you have people now taking their own initiative the ranking member talked about the the almost forums going around the country i think that's a very good question madam chairwoman and one of the questions was what type of forum can we legally establish for the mobile alert advisory committee as a model for handling the this issue in the future well what i can tell you is from the f c c is perspective systems that worked well in this  case we were very fortunate to have people from different perspectives and i have to give the wireless industry credit because we had all the major carriers on the committee and they all work up of people and people have their own agendas and personalities and so if there's you don't have the right people on an advisory committee you don't necessarily get the same  have the right people you know if you don't have right people sitting up here you know we all have to people take a chance on all of us they don't know if we were right people seems to me there would be less of a chance given all the emergency management  apparatus we have in the country in putting together who are the right people i'm concerned that and i'm really reflecting the concern out there in in the country  anything about what we need to do i just don't understand that that kind of matter about who should be on it you know if you got it wrong people are ok but some of the people on it too in your case and for that matter and famous case for example congress has their grants to help offset the cost of upgrades  e local governments applying for these grants these e a s grants and so what kind of guidance can you give them given the the virtual starting point where you find yourself i can speak  to the area of alerts and warnings and as i said in my testimony from zero six and zero seven in those two years on twenty seven states applied for grants that totaled about a billion dollars that could be used for alerts and warnings  my counterparts and in the grand directorate it seem i could give you more detailed information but we've been working with them particularly since the gulf pilots when we saw the success of those capabilities being  fielded to be sure that language was written in to the grants that would allow the state flexibility in using grant money for alerts and warnings this is very important and again it's important that the states and locals determine what capabilities are most important to them what their priorities are because what might be a useful siren system in one place won't work in another a t m or opt in or whatever it may be if you like to have more specific grant information i would like to get back to that information and divert i'm going to leave this subject for the moment very concerned about the start up nature of this i'm going to ask then submit to the subcommittee within thirty days a plan for forums you have to have all the forms going and i would hope that that would trigger the forms and i don't think i know if you within fema there are the experts who can tell you how to do this that i would if you want to do a pilot form first so that you're sure of what kind of people but it seems to me you should submit a plan for forms and you ought to be able to start of these one form within the next thirty days i think that would increase the confidence of the public that this is this matter it's critical for manufacturers to build the equipment for the group programmers to write the software for broadcasters to purchase the right equipment for state and local officials to be sure that they upgrade their announce its intention to adopt the cap one point one in about thirty to sixty days that's going to the time between that and actually publishing the standards it's going to take an effort  define how we're going to meet the standard and how the rest of the community is we're very concerned because publishing the standard specifically starts the hundred and eighty day clock on compliance with other federal agencies compliance by industry as well and we know that many will need time to be able to comply once the standard is published and we want to use this time from announcing our intention to go to a specific standard to let them begin work toward a reasonable standard but not be locked into the hundred and eighty day clock that will result in many being an compliant regardless of the amount of work they put into this we have a particular issue with index in code or decoders at the pep stations that are no longer being manufactured and we would have to begin manufacturing those to have the broadcasters in compliance so we want to work again  there for is that their specific groups in working with industry working with emergency managers and working with the federal partners to make sure that what we come up with is something that we can all we can all comply with and we can all produce them will be successful and that's one of the real the main reason that we have been delay well you have to you have to develop a consensus among all of the stakeholders and all the folks out there you have to do that  it's going to do that if the consensus first but the other issue is to physically be able to comply with the equipment and it's the equipment manufacturing that has fallen by the wayside and that will take time to regenerate on to allow them to physically be compliant with this it seems to me like we can't move forward until we have that until we have that protocol until everybody's working and at least working towards that goal that they have some sort of consensus door to be working towards so everything's kind of on hold until until we get to that point when you say thirty to thirty to sixty days you're going to have a protocol yes or thirty sixty days what we are trying to do is is an announcer intention to go to a cap one point one many manufacturers are already using that as a standard it's one that they will know it is going to be the standard to some degree  it won't hold up progress but it will allow them time to become able to comply and allow industry time as well as no in female with our network we can also and will and are working with the f c c as well because  the the rule that gives one hundred eighty days is another area that we can look at to see if there's some relief there so we can and announce and publish the standards and still allow the community time to comply so when will there be a federal standard appro that would be something i'd like to get back to you on i can make a guess but i don't think it would be fair to give you a timeline we we need to push this we need to be able to have a list of products in companies that produce the products first local emergency managers to choose from and have confidence in we need to make sure that that manufacturers know the standards so that our system can be interoperable with what they're producing so we are very anxious to get this going but we're also trying to be very realistic and make sure that what we come out with is something that is actually doable i mean one of them i mean you're the leadership so go ahead and give me an estimate you know i guess i would estimate because of the manufacturing time it's been estimated to us for the index using them as a start point that it would be after an announcement it would be maybe eighteen months before they would be able to to get those in production again we can get back to you with some of the other requirements that we know some of the timelines on we don't control that we've already been talking to companies that might be interested in producing and trying to get ahead of this some so that we can keep pushing us some once we do come out with a standard that we have some confidence that they're actually going ahead and will be able to help us meet it one of the concerns that we have in new york is the fact that you know we have we have spent a great deal of money in our state in order to develop a system ourselves the new york alerts and is there any assurances that we can get from fee more or what steps will fema take to try to integrate you know i mean we don't we certainly don't want to detract from initiatives within the state especially in states that have spent a great deal of money and are there any steps being taken to ensure that we can integrate what's being done locally on the state level to whatever fema dobbs absolutely and that's one of the goals of i pods is to have an integrated into operable system new york has has done a lot washington state has done a lot the national capital region has a rob capability and what we're doing is working with them to be sure that the standards we come out with that the systems we come out with for the for the national system will allow those capabilities to to  operating that the states be able to piggyback off on the national infrastructure much like they do now with the current e a s not only do we learn a lot from the states and what they're doing but we want to make sure that this is integrated public alert and warning system is just that and will allow the states that have the capability to continue using that capability and that's why it's so important that we work with them that we understand what they're doing and what their needs are and where they're headed as well as what steps this fema take in order to let the states the particular states know the direction that they are heading in to sort of lead but in other words give the states some indication that look fim is heading in this direction so you may want to taper what you're doing in the same direction that fema is heading what we have begun doing since the i pod's program management office was set up a year ago particularly in the last six months i've become very active going to conferences going  to the hurricane conference going to i am conferences wherever we're invited we go and we talk about i pods and have an outreach program so that state and locals can understand what we're doing we also have been working through the ten seamer regions  region one is just appointed a specific i pods coordinator for us and we're hoping to use that with the other regions as well we we did the pilots in the gulf we did other d e s pilots in the nine states territory and we're also using that as vehicles to learn who to reach out to in the states emergency managers obviously governor obviously homeland security advisers in some cases are connected or not but we need we can always do a better job m r just really i feel beginning down that path where we've done pilots we're ready to rock the first employment increment of i pause and as this as this is rolled out we need to have an aggressive outreach an education to the states in all this we've found there are five states that have decided not to use e a s for their state system and we need to understand why that is to and work with them and i don't want to put you on the spine as to which states but but you find that some states are a little more amenable to working with the same of than other states are a little more cooperative in terms of adopting the same type of strategy what we found and i can give you the five states later and i could probably name them because i'm very concerned i was surprised frankly to learn that some had had decided not to use the system but what we've learned is that the states as a as a whole tend to trust again that because we have long standing relationships in other areas for emergency support but that there are very leery of having a federal solution imposed on them because they depending on their the geographic location they have different different problems that they're going to face natural hazards so it's very important to them that that we look at its solutions that an integrated system that can support their choices so i guess we're learning the best way to communicate with them but it is it is an area that we really look forward to to developing further in our national communications with them our meetings with them particularly along the gulf coast last year were very very informative and helpful thank you mr carney had to step out but he asked me if if it got to this point before he returned if i would ask one question he represents a district in northern pennsylvania and his concern is this with respect to i pause how are you and to improve coverage to remote areas and he points out that in his district which is in which is rural communication is not a foregone conclusion and he notes that he gets cell phone service but only if you stand in certain parts of his home and many people in israel communities don't benefit from the same level of telecommunications as other people do in suburbs and cities and work and what can they expect in that regard i can sympathize because i come from northwestern vermont where we just have no cell phone service at all  approach is one two layer capability to maintain a vigorous alert system over radio and television that we currently have to layer on that we believe the probably the most effective next capability is the a t m the enhanced telephone notification known as reverse nine one one which is a trademark term now because more people have landlines it's not an opt in and we can push up to sixty thousand calls in ten minutes if the state telephone infrastructure can accommodate that that's the next we think most effective capability short term while we continue to develop the opt in for web alerts e mail alerts pager alerts cellphone alerts as well those are all layers that will help reach more people but for the rural folks we really need to make sure that we have coming in to digital us that we have an e t n capability and that the states understand and have some funding streams for that as well because that will really reach out to the rural and in those jurisdictions that choose to have sirens that the sirens can be tied into the alert system as well and again that's a local choice that works for some and it doesn't for others so the layered approach we feel is really the way to reach the most people regardless before they live thank you very much  i'm only following because we see this as the layered approach and we see i paused as a continued development for alerts to upgrade the technology of alerts however we're rolling out the first anchorman of pods capability this fiscal year this summer we are fielding the digital us and then nine states and territory where we piloted over the last two years and we're adding five more locations to that this year  we also added ne was to two states to florida pennsylvania last year at their request and we are pushing on our work with geo targeting with nola to be able to do a better job the with the cell phone alerts which need geo targeting capability and with opt in and encouraging states with e t n so while we continue to develop technology that we need to do a better job we also are very firm about rolling out some capability now the states need this now not only the standards and protocols but they need to understand the real capabilities that they have available to them and general next question deals with the researchers i know found that the local officials need these public alert warning systems that meet some basic requirements specifically they require delivery of warnings to the public and in less than two minutes especially true in common situations like i believe it will for certain delivery methods now and our work in development is to make sure that whatever we do whether it's it's work as a as a federal aggregator or whether it's developing  better technology to delivery methods of different different alerts to make sure that we don't interfere first of all with the state message or delay the state message in that we find ways to reach people the quickest way possible the person with a cell phone is not going to get an a t m message at home but they will get it on their cell phone so that is very much on our minds i think will see realistically that  the very quick breaking alerts for tornadoes where they have less than two minutes it might be difficult to get a message through just for the time it takes that emergency manager to send the message out but no one does a a fabulous i believe that the public deserves to get the alerts as soon as possible over every means as possible i think that's a yes i'm trying to stay out of trouble but i know that our our business is alerts and warnings and our our passion is making sure that people get life saving information and i think that that should be available to everybody however i respect the judgment and the rights of the governors in the states and i know that all of our partners feel the same way we do about getting alerts out and they're doing everything within their power to alert their residence thank you for your back don't require however the the broadcasters to certify their compliance given that we're trying to upgrade the the system shouldn't there be a more rigorous assessment of these broadcasters and their status well i think that the commission already  percent of license broadcasters for yeah i can understand that you can't go around inspect everybody but as we try to modernize the system living in the post nine eleven period are there any changes you yemenis are these are old ways of doing business are there any changes you would make given the fact that we don't expect you to go around and look at every broadcaster to find some way for example to certify their compliance at this point i do not  know whether or not that's an issue that is currently before the commission so that's something i would have that specific not something i would have to get back to you on but i wish you the back to us within thirty days on on that we're talking about upgrading the system i mean the f well as being with should be looking at what it used to do to see if that is the same the same as what it should continue to doing apparently there's a federal requirement that help me on this that if it's  federal alert then you've got a broadcast it but of course not all of these broadcasters we learned from captain judkins are part of the  system so i it is hard for me to understand how that could be a federal system where everybody would have to visit paid and then there  and and and and then there be apparently a different way of regulating understand most most or many broadcasters who are example belong how does the universal requirement stack up with whatever the states require people to do so that some don't even have to do it what i can tell you is that the requirement that be my house is to maintain an emergency alert system that can be used to transmit the presidential message that federal alert message  any idea how many broadcasters have not momentarily decided to comply it is concerning i mean there are certain categories obviously as you well know that are required that it is mandatory  not required but the major broadcasters and including the cable and satellite are required it's mandatory for them to carry the federal alert that presidential message which i never did i never we we are federal government we can we can talk about federal works right but we're really talking about alerts almost all of which emanate from the state absolutely folks let me ask you how  what's the difference between those who are required by us and those that states and others who apparently but this is a bone terribly basically you know all broadcast  all media companies basically broadcast radio television cable so on and so forth are required to carry the presidential who would that leave out please if they're just doing the presidential alert that that would be all they would be doing is the alert that's coming from the get they i have concern with and if the congress has a concern where god help us would be state generated therefore i'm interested in knowing who doesn't participate and on what basis since we know that large numbers do on a voluntary basis are there large numbers who do not participate and what kinds of of of station would be most likely not to participate i'm on the where off the top of my head to what extent i know there are some broadcasters that may not may choose not to participate in transmitting state and local e s l or i would have to get back to you on  reason for that and what kind of station would likely know the reason i'm interested miss folks is the political the only reason we're having this hearing is the proliferation of technology that puts a special burden on fever in the of numerous numerous kinds of outlets that just weren't even on a map even ten years ago so once you get a state regulation since we're talking  very rare presidential i mean even a mile was only presidential for louisiana and i can't imagine and i hope i there is no scenario where where the where the president is going to be yelling you whatever it is but what we're dealing with every day our tornado hurricanes floods don't drive through the warder and the  like the committee is interested in given the obliteration of outlets in knowing who it is who is at liberty not to resist or paid an unknowing whether or not there's any big thing to participate in is there some expense involved is there some cost to the broadcaster involved could you enlighten us on that those specific questions i would have to get back to you on again  specific questions i would ask to get back to you very concerned i know that and when you get back to our two hours also on the number of outlets that do not participate you have no idea who's listening to these things some people listening only to those things we have such a niche society it's very dangerous to have such a niche deciding that we have people looking on you know read only look at only those t v stations that they think of for them you know they  listen only to pub music that they think is their thing and they don't even hear never go to mainstream or maybe to what the average person has to consider f c c is in the best position to understand is that when you talk in so many outlets some ice technology you have at least this member saying where's the siren  i do not have confidence particularly since even the asses had to be carried by everybody that everybody is going to receive it through our fancy footwork with with technology i'm very concerned  rainville about what you have done first of all let me just say this before i ask you about this contractor you apparently did sign a contract with a contractor pursuant to an interagency agreement with india but first i've got to ask you this you have testified here that there been no forms the only people help us anything as we upgrade the system which we have stipulated is largely for what happens in the states and localities are located there  first question is how could you let a contract at all without hearing through forms or some other mechanism what the states and localities need i mean i was a little shaken to hear you say you know we do outweight region you know when we want to hear about i pods first of all what is there to hear about but far beyond that why would we we're investing in technology before listening to the people who are laundry and help us upgrade know what to put money and since there's not an infinite pot and what not to i don't understand on what basis you let a contract at all how did you know what you were contracting for one of our mandates is to assure that that federal message can be delivered so in our desire to update  upgrade technology into that federal structure we know that there's a lot of work that needs to be done and it's that capable and modernized federal infrastructure that the state by which you mean what are you talking about some wires and what do you when i'm talking about systems architecture that will allow the transmission of modern emergency alerts and warnings we need that from the federal perspective for that president messages we know it also for ways using technology that we can use that message through a digital means with digital e a s and through other methods other devices to reach more people as you said  people are not at their radios now they're off with their i pods or they are at work on their computer with their e mail and we need to be able to reach them through as many ways as pie and we need to know what kinds of ways with really would be worth the money and what kind of ways wo places including where we sit right now in any case even before you know there's been no forms even though your century had started even though you let a contract to sand national laboratories as the i paused integrator integrator what i can imagine anyway somebody must have known because they were supposed to deliver and they were supposed to live all these things you just talked about i post technology work on standard to development work to ensure that all i pods systems are easy certification and accreditation and support for the  pilot we understand that they got approximately eighteen million dollars and that you received almost no deliverables was this contract competitively bid this was  sorry my question was very direct was this contract bid by competition not to my knowledge and that that was before i came to fame up but not to my knowledge because it was already a standing i is under review it seem is what is under review at fema we continue to do they deliver anything was going to they delivered the work for the gulf pilots of the they subcontracted out with other vendors for the opt in the e t n the american sign language alert deaf and hard of hearing and they they so they did but they integrated and they ran the pilots for us that is one thing they delivered but they did not deliver as it was provided in the statement of work the documents the after action reports we only have a draft of the standards and protocols have not been delivered and they have not given us that any of that documentation so that is now under three any of your funds back from sandia we have indicated to them that we expect three million to come back to us that they have not already used and again and they are going to keep the eighteen million fully they are saying that they have used that money to do whatever they have done to this point you believe they can do the job for what we need to do as far as india is regarding but we are also now working with the h s science and technology to help us further develop some of these systems and that we had since that up a program management office for i pods as you know its famous who is doing some of the architecture work themselves so we have looked at other means of accomplishing this work because we've got to push on with i pause and this frankly has really delayed the grave misgivings about the stories of federal and for that matter local spending on whole commuters computer  systems as one example that just you know some sars thing doesn't work for us after the government has spent all this money and it seems to me we may be going on this road again and some of this may not be preventable because the way technology moves quickly the way we have to try to figure out all the tasks that we really want the technology to do in this one is truly complex the subcommittee would have huge misgivings about your putting more money out there without these forums we don't think you know what you're talking about frankly we only know what people can tell us about how the e s a is work we only know because you're going to have limited funds we only have in our bill what twenty five million thirty seven for f y o eight you're not going to have a lot of money so you're not going to be able to do a cadillac in the first place and with out systematic import from the field i don't know how in the world a contractor could proceed there may be some parts of this that are so clearly outdated that any system would need some of that but i am even the area about that given the horrible is only word for as the i r s who spent billions of dollars on computers that don't do anything now so once somebody tells me what i'm doing is giving the contractors and people to do some technology that has to do with very complicated upgrading of other of their technology to deal with it every day which it can technology out there the people are using they your task is so complex that i begin to wonder where they can be done at f system can't come into everybody's i pod sorry but if we tell you this up up up front at least you know but of course if you put out a contract and said hey what we're going to do is we don't get you where you are without in fact doing what i regard as the most complicated groundwork to figure this out and how you know how you figure it out and i can tell you back to you one thing the old adage you don't know something you better ask somebody and the experts are located where they have hard time kane's where they have tornadoes where they've had floods flash floods i'm very concerned this subcommittee is very concerned that the new york example may be the only way to go in a new york had nine eleven so they don't what they have to do now wave you or anybody else there are people who had natural disasters who see the federal thank you both for really important testimony about a subject of last importance not only to our committee and subcommittee but to the people of the united states of america is there no other questions are there other questions than will call the next witness county florida and michael womack reading for vice president a member of the board of directors national emergency managers association and director of the mississippi state emergency management a good morning slam good afternoon terry woman norton ranking member graves and distinguished members of the subcommittee thank you for allowing me the opportunity to provide testimony on alert and warning from a local perspective i'm larry and i serve hillsboro county on the west coast of florida as director of emergency management a position i have held for fifteen of my twenty eight years in a career field i am currently serving as a president of the international association of emergency managers and i have also served as the president of florida emergency preparedness association i am has over four thousand members in the united states and in other countries most of our members are u s city and county emergency managers who perform the crucial function of coordinating and integrating the emergency management efforts at the local level our members represent both urban and rural areas throughout the country former house speaker tip o'neill is credited with observing that all politics are local i would like to modify those remarks by saying that like politics all disasters are local one of the most basic responsibilities of local governments and their elected officials is to provide a mechanism to alert and warn citizens of pending danger on the west coast of florida we have over ninety severe weather days a year with events like winds in excess of sixty miles per hour driving rain pounding hail and occasionally tornadoes these events normally occur unannounced and frequently at night since one thousand nine hundred eight florida has had three major tornado tornado outbreaks which have killed a total of sixty two people and destroyed or damaged over a thousand homes for the utilizes the emergency alert system which captures the audio on all television radio and cable systems that permit us to issue an emergency message we also depend heavily on the no weather radio system to issue a warning to those individuals who have purchased such radios many counties have a computerized telephone notification system that dials multiple telephone numbers and delivers a pre recorded message it has been our experience that these systems are good for warning a specific neighborhood of an emergency but they become problematic and community wide notifications because the phone switching network quickly overloads we believe we only reach about fifty percent of our citizens by utilizing all of the existing systems another problem facing local governments is the ability to warn special populations as an example visually impaired hearing impaired those with impaired mental skills and as well as the non english speaking population none of the current warning systems makes this type of warning easy and in most cases it is impossible to reach these types of citizens there have been proposals of utilizing s m s text messaging over cell phones as i mean a means of warning this message this use me this method shares some of the drawbacks of the other systems s m s messaging is expensive and can be delayed like the automated phone dialers do similar switching network problems also most text messaging systems require the individual citizen to opt in to receive the alerts this brings us to the proposed integrated public alert and warning system i pause this system purports to be an integrated activation of multiple alerting and warning systems each utilizing that common alerting protocol cap if this is true then our ability to warn a larger percentage of our vulnerable population will be realized and more lives will be saved however systems in technology are not the complete answer coupled with them has to be an expansion and a greater support of our existing public education programs on what to do when the warning is received as well as giving hundreds of public presentations a year we work closely with the local media to bring to reduce video shows and written pamphlets that also convey the message of individual citizen action the most technologically sophisticated warning system possible will fail if the person receiving the warning does not know what action to take to save their lives this lifesaving answer information has to be presented and repeated over and over and over until it is absorbed and then also repeated at the time of the warning i am supports the concept of an improved alert and warning system if it is designed to support state and local governments and executing their primary responsibility for warning the public we do not want to see a system which adds more time to the process of issuing warnings we do want to see the system to reach a large percentage of the affected population it must be easy to use reasonably priced to maintain and operate the system was also enable us to reach those special populations finally we need to continue and increase our long standing education programs for citizens so they have the knowledge to do the right thing at the right time when dangerous eminent thank you madam chairwoman norton and ranking member graves and other members of the committee for having me here i'm speaking on behalf of the national emergency management association naima that is made up of state directors emergency management i'm also going to speak on the state of mississippi experience with the op paul's pilot program there are several key areas that i will discuss the first is that i believe in name a believes that the current organizational structure of a perfect republic  lerton warning for the most part works well but more coordination on the federal level is necessary second that mississippi has experience with the integrated public alert and warnings in the system i pause was again for the most part  good but then more federal support is needed to complete the pot and third legislation to implement the executive order and to provide statutory authority for the current practice could be helpful in moving the nation's efforts forward provided there is more coordination with state and local government stakeholder holders of the system is developed i'm quite lucky at this point because i'm going to be able to deviate from a lot of my written remarks because they've been covered by  i would say they're right on target with almost everything they've said about the variety of systems that are out there the fact that no one system works very well and i really want to emphasize this education and public preparedness part of it it is absolutely critical we have a lot of success in mississippi working with the national weather service local emergency management directors and other responders in teaching the public what a watch is and what a warning is and one of the discussions that you had earlier today was about the amount of time you have for a tornado warning the watches are often hours in advance and some of the warnings can be ten or fifteen minutes in advance so it's it is big part of us public education as with other states my state uses a variety of technologies we use sirens we use outdoor learning systems reverse nine one one blast e mails and some text messages as well as some new technologies the current organizational structure for alerting warning systems in the federal government works reasonably well and there's no reason for radical change the national weather service no weather radio is an excellent two and is used very effectively in my state and many other states  federal emergency management agency in our opinion the name is opinion is the right place for a pause and we support its efforts in trying to pull this together as we've talked is this committee's talk earlier this is an extremely complex set of issues the term patchwork was used a little bit earlier without taking responsibility and authority away from state and local government you're going to have some patchwork as far as the need for the presidential message we fully support that but understand that ninety nine point nine percent of the missing jing will come from state and local government primarily from local in talking about the  cause and it's work on the mississippi gulf coast we used the my state is the vendor that provided most of our technical logical services the death link portion of the pilot work very well the reverse nine one one system had a lot of challenges but ultimately was was successful and there's nothing like having a voice that people understand and hear frequently that they trust governor barbour recorded messages that we were able to send out under our pauls having to do with hurricane preparedness and hurricane warnings and it was a very effective but even though it was effective we're only looking at approximately forty two percent of the calls were alive answer thirty two percent of the calls were voice answering machines and twenty six percent were unsuccessful and they were only lanolin calls of massive volume of calls two hundred twenty one thousand calls were made it and one of our  the program was effectively terminated so it needs to be funded and it needs to be on a more lengthy basis last month ranking member graves introduced house bill sixty thirty eight to direct the president modernize integrated public alert and warning system we feel that this is a good step it will further strengthen the role of thema and the need for developing a nationwide system in conclusion we appreciate congress's increased attention and focus on disaster and alert warning systems and thank you on behalf of na mccabe thank you and good afternoon chairwoman norton and ranking member graves i am christopher got mccabe vice president for regulatory affairs it's e t i the wireless association c g i is the international organization representing all sectors of the wireless industry carriers manufacturers content and data providers i am privileged to appear before you today to present c t s views on important topic of emergency alerts my comments today focus on the wireless industry's efforts to develop an alerting service through the warren act and how these efforts work with the goals set out in h r thirty sixty thirty eight this is an exciting time the wireless industry as well as federal state local governments recognize the importance of timely emergency alerts delivered to as wide a group as possible c industry understand the role wireless can play in consumer safety the industry already philip there's over one hundred thousand the nine one one calls each day the industry was proud to support the warning alert and response network act the key element of that act was a true partnership with congress the f c c government agencies and industry the wireless industry has in its recent past some examples of what can happen when government and industry partner voluntarily in the creation of a new service wireless priority services a program through the department of homeland security that utilizes wireless networks to deliver priority access to key government officials during times of crisis the federal government work with industry to develop the requirements for the service but did not mandate a technical solution the service was deployed and developed quickly which can put from the technology experts resulting in no challenges no appeals and no delays c c i in the industry also launched a voluntary wireless amber alert service in partnership with the department of justice and the national center for missing and exploited children but century lifesaving amber alert messages are delivered to wireless subscribers who opt in to the offering and in the emergency learning context c g i in the industry of coordinate efforts with the h s fema and the f c c through various pilot programs going forward c g i in the industry believe that alert should ultimately be transmitted on multiple retransmission media while wireless can and should be a component of any alerting service madam chair as you have stated a complete public alert warning system should explore the full range of redirected communications media and devices without limiting itself to the wireline and wireless phone networks radio television cable or satellite congress got it right when established the framework for creating and deploying wireless emergency alerts the warren act and acted on  oct thirteenth two thousand and six properly balances wireless carriers capabilities with the requirements of an effective alerting service congress's plan is working as scripted the f c c established an advisory committee comprised of more than forty individuals representing federal state local tribal governments communications providers vendors third party service bureaus broadcasters consumers groups disability groups and technical experts among others i served as well as one of the wireless industry's representatives to that committee over eleven months we generated over six hundred documents held hundreds of meetings spent thousands of man hours to develop a thorough workable proposal on april ninth of this year the f c c issued its first report an order largely adopting the recommendations of the committee among other things the order set forth the alerting service architecture proposed and concluded that a federal government entity should aggregate authenticate and transmit alerts to the carriers just last week feme announced this intense intention to fill this important role so while the f c c and the have established the commercial alert service architecture and are working on technical standards and procedures fema will develop standards and protocols to fill its role as the aggregator and issue technical specifications governing the alert gateway we look forward to working with them cooperatively on that process the f c c also require that participating providers must transmit three classes of alerts presidential him an imminent threat and amber alerts must target those alerts geographically and must include an audio attention signal and vibration cadence for subscribers with disabilities and the elderly the efforts underway with the f t c and industry to develop and deploy commercial mobile or system with the strong likelihood of the most involvement of the alert aggregator compliment the girl goals established in h r sixty thirty eight for example the warnock will help quote government reach the pet the broadest portion of the effective population as possible and quote as well as ensure broad dissemination of presidential level learns two of the key goals of h r sixty thirty eight while the industry is pursuing and accomplishing many of these goals with the f c c and ultimately fema fema under the framework of the warren act c c i cautions against congress and the agencies taking any action that could disrupt the significant efforts and progress to date in conclusion of government industry partnership as seen in the development of wireless products service and wireless amber alerts and is being realized right now under the worn out process will facilitate development of deployment of a comprehensive modern wireless alert system c in the industry look forward to continuing to work with government in this effort thank you again for this opportunity to highlight our work to enhance the nation's public alert and warning capabilities and i look for dancing and your questions like this complexity you have there and trying to meet all of them all forms of media deal with everything and say now we have this system and everybody really think they really do have one  it does seem that the task may be simplified rather than duplicate maybe there are some differences that would need to sit a curb and looks like if we did this in every stage you'd have all the stakeholders ready made with an understanding of why it's needed and with the field experience and the communications experience needed to put it together so this might simplify the notion of getting about i am very very concerned percent of the alerts and warnings are issued by local governments the state doesn't issue many many alerts mornings was mostly at the local level county and cities level but all that is your yes ma'am but the you know the statistics that i gave out had to do just with the reverse nine one one system i think and it demonstrates that the reverse nine one one system can be effective for maybe some but when forty and sixty percent of the population and that's it and that's why you have to have about four or five or six different systems and i totally agree with you that low tech needs to be part of the solution there are places where warning sirens are very effective and college settings in places where there are large concentrations of populations but  i just don't think that that we can go in and mandate anywhere that says this is the system that needs to work for you i would like to compliment themas their vendors that work with us trying to fix the systems as they try to field with us now i don't know that i would of out of preferred to have more input on the on the front end of it but but they did try to come in and fix the system as best they could until they ran out of time or budget whichever it was so there was a lot of effort and trying to get the systems up and operational mr young man mccabe you see i bring some skepticism about trying to you trying to even trying to put all the diverse media and therefore save the public a low volume and it now because when somebody's cell phone doesn't work when there is some disaster they're going to say what you said  we know that for example in the junior tech shooting that taught us that close communities like campuses which are almost by definition high tech can use text messaging of fairly well but as i look down the road and consider that how expensive this would be even to do it simply i'm not sure why you want to include text messaging for the nation and with the capacity to say to the states regardless of where it is people should be able to use text messaging and should be able to use cell phones i can't imagine a cell phone that would work hundred percent of the time it does then they tell me because machine could cause cancer or whatever you say the point is the technology doesn't pretend to be perfect and the one thing that the federal government's going to have to do in the states are going to have to do is to try to say what with not going being too prescriptive so i think the rationale in the act was that two hundred fifty five two hundred sixty five million americans have cell phones so this is this is a good outlet a lot of people take what it tells me now saying well and so house the absolute is and is going to be twice that you know and just a few years that tells me nothing what i do know is those things don't always work and it's been a whole lot of money where half of them may be down look it could be off chairwoman as a local practitioner for twenty eight years and i have one point two million people who depend on me to get alerts and warnings i carry what's called an alert and warning tool kit it has multiple systems in it my community is very diverse we go all the way from the newly born all the way to the nearly dead and i have to communicate across the entire diverse community and i have to use every tool in my tool ki cell phones could be a tool sirens can be a tool telephone alerting systems can be a tool the problem that i have is i don't have a single button one button activate all the system so i have to sequence really pick the two out of the toolkit alert that segment of the population pick another tool drip it off and alert another segment if i could push one button and alert them actual number systems it would greatly help me but please may i while i have the microphone the absolute biggest problem is our public doesn't want to be warned they go through life their lives are so complex they have answering machines on their telephones their cell phones are either on or off every system that they have been on you have the option to activate only thirty percent of the people choose to opt in the other people the other seventy produce for some  percent with the sirens because we don't have enough money to cover one hundred percent of the nation with sirens and we get twenty or thirty percent with landlines and we get another twenty or thirty percent with with text messaging and one good thing about text messaging is it takes very little bandwidth can for compared to voice so you can push out millions of messages compared to the amount of time it takes for voice those those to those you know fifty thousand seventy thousand calls to two to two to three hours to push them out has nothing to do with a vendor it has to do with the bandwidth of the cell towers and has to do with how many college you can get three switches locally so there is an advantage to it i would think text messaging would be a cheap relatively cheap alternative compared to voice because it is it takes up so little the bandwidth that is expert on it and that's correct and what i would say be alerted to text messaging in the same way other areas to the phone ring you can and the idea behind the warn act in the technical specifications is that it's a it's similar to text messaging but it doesn't have an impact on the network so you send out one messages almost acts like a broadcast sort of concentric circles and everyone in the area whether they're roaming into the area or they're generally there gets the message the message is simple and straightforward it's ninety characters it's easy to read and i understand your concern madam chair but i would just say wireless makes sense to have it be a component of it on our side of the equation our c e o s have committed to doing the upgrades and and making the upgrades available on the on the committee we had representatives from the five largest carriers their senior technical person their chief technical officer sat on the committee and put in the time to be part of this to be a component and i think congress looked at wireless and said let's you know i pause it's a broad reaching effort let's focus on one area that's growing everyone seems to be having a cell phone let's focus on that let's get that out so you earlier mentioned concerns regarding whether there was a clear path or guidelines congress gave the wireless industry and the f c c a clear path and guidelines and we're hitting it and so the reason why wireless should be involved i would argue is because congress directed us to and we have honored that and we're not getting but while we should not be involved but they are commute the question is if we have a universal system it seems to me we've got to warn people in advance which systems we using there and we put out this notion that we have wireless we we have reverse nine one one you have any such thing we have whatever the local community can do the capability to do is quite apart from what a universal system is lucky a f and obviously i like something as simple as that unfortunately all perhaps foolishly the world isn't that simple anymore and we do want to major ways we have are to notify you are here i get back to mystic gives birth and public education it can address the question it works i think very well in mississippi and i think it works very well in other states as well and it's in its because we have the national weather service working with local emergency management directors who work with their responder community i'll give you an example just this past year the weather service the morning before the storm system came in in the afternoon did a conference call with all local directors in the impacted area saying you're you're at a high risk for tornadoes high risk you need to make sure that you that everyone is notified of this so the local emergency management director in the county call up all of the responders and call up all the schools and called up other people that needed to know this information and said be ready this could happen between two and four o'clock so when the warnings actually carrying through they were already for all through what are we going to and a school was hit and not one child was and you're but that's why it's it's not just about warning systems worked well the other point i'd like to make about it is because of its work with public radio and commercial radio not all of them but if people want to get the warnings they can that's really what it comes down to and one thing if you if you don't mind madam chair that i would add is mr ginsberg and others have talked about education on the consumer side of the equation i think as we expand this service into other mediums like why arliss there needs auster to be some education on the alert originator side of the equation i was one of those thirty percent that actually subscribe to arlington alerts in arlington virginia and we've looked at i sort of catalogue my last one hundred alerts from arlington county and if if you'll indulge me just for a minute i'm just going to give you the raid line in the email that came to my to my wireless phone for the last ten or so military aircraft fly over traffic alert rolling thunder ceremonial cannon firing military aircraft fly over rabid fox in the area water main break comcast cable outage flash flood warning so it isn't until you get to about the eleventh alert that actually there is one that's a flash flood warning if you look at this just a tornado just gave you this packet you'll see about fifty in there i would say two would qualify by these gentlemen as actual emergency alert so the thirty hours what when people know that that's what's gotten that's what comes forward lots of people not going to turn on the phone at all and we know we do we call it the car alarm syndrome we fear the car alarm syndrome that if you know alarms now just go off so often that people don't bat an eye so a great thing about e a s is when people see that across a television i think they look because they first of all you've educated the public a sample they know that it could be the real thing and they're grateful it's not so i am i you know technology's a great great advantage is that it allows us to do a lot of things with it we would get this public education i know how to get the e a s they got it through through it coming on telling you this is a test and that's how people got to know it they didn't have thinking particularly ethic but if you if you find emergency management at the local level and you fund national weather service at the local level then they can be out there doing your education because we're not going to be able to do it at the state or national level or you're simply not going to be able to do it the education it's got to come from the local level and they could teach people what a watch means versus what a warning means and they can teach people that you can teach them the local emergency management director the local national weather service representative and if that if those are funded but there's a you know there's this tendency to say we can consolidate the national weather service offices or we don't need to fund every county level emergency management director that's not the case in emergency preparedness you need those people on the ground who are out there educating the public again is responsible for one point two million people we do over two hundred public presentations a year we do it to civic association business groups homeowners association and as a part of those presentations we tell them about a learning warning we tell them what to do when the strips off or when the no weather trips off and we continue to tell them we continue to tell them we continue to tell them they need to be reemphasize because when it actually happens people suddenly they get a little addled and they don't they forget what they're supposed to do the biggest problem with sirens is you can use sirens for one and only one thing because you can train a person hear the siren do this if you tell people if you hear the siren you need to do one of five things you're in trouble so once again whatever diverse i pause e a s whatever system the federal government approves of the absolute primary objective should be educator public educator public here's what you do when you hear the warning and then it will be successful otherwise you will spend millions of dollars on systems to trip and people say what do i do we have to educate the public and that's done at the local level well i couldn't agree more see and you interrupt something that i wanted to see and therefore i got educated i think we got to be very sophisticated about had to have diversified we become and how busy everybody is and as we contemplate this network be sure allow everyone to do everything because they don't pay for it that all government setting that going to do it and i love your low tech way i do effectiveness in the first place and that was exactly the comment i was going to have that when directors of emergency management or mayors or share or certainly the governor when they go on t v and radio and they talk about preparedness and they talk about the meaning of these systems that might encourage some people to go a step further and go to their local local emergency management director some of these meetings but it's more than a shooting the media media put out the messages with electronic methods it's also using the what i'm leery of is developing a very simple way to educate the public and to educate the majority of the public and that you know you know you know know how to do that vast marketing people want to put someone on this forum that you could do you think that would be him in an important way already existing on the ground way just for the record to be implemented  it's a very good model because it it goes across broadcasters were involved as long as as well as wireless and and local and a good cross representation we don't have to discount it re sink and start from ground zero i don't think it has to mirror it mechanism i'm sorry i would just say that they don't get started in a program and then either for funding or to just suddenly say ok we want to stop it and then when we go another direction yeah we do  funded again that if we wanted to we could try to contract for the services ourselves all work own fixing the quote unquote bugs and they could have been bugs and and our agency that we just weren't using it properly all that stopped effectively and we were basically told that if we wanted to use our own state money or use other homeland security grant funding to pay for these services we could do so there's only two problems with that were required under state law to go out for competitive bid process is so it may be different vendors that we would have to work with if we try to contact the contractor services through the state the second thing is this if you're not a metropolitan area state population wise like you know like new york or d c or someplace your homeland security grant funding has been reduced tremendously based on threat and i say that we're not looking at the threat of hurricanes and earthquakes we're doing our funding but that's another issue but very important issue because of that all need to say it over and over again the after nine eleven the the the emphasis on a terrorist attack has been very detrimental to emergency management the united states as what you really need to prepare for is al qaeda of course we need to do that we have a whole agency to do that and we funded people as if that's what the funding was for in the early days after nine eleven and here we will see this this this subcommittee and this this full committee has long tried to make everyone understand that even with the homeland security committee and which i serve by the way we're talking about all hazards and then not ninety nine percent of those are the hazards that you know most about i think there has got to be a balanced approach the name of position is there's got to be a balanced approach we have to have funding for terrorism prevention  and response but we have got to make sure that we keep funding for natural has what services were you funded for that you don't believe you should you could keep the keep going where dr sunday we're trying to find state dollars right now to protect particularly nine one with a reverse nine one one system again plus some of the other things like the the hearing impaired and some of the other services we need the services provided by  we're either going to have to take homeland security grants that were banned i pods you need the services we need the services provide about why because as i said if we get forty to sixty percent of the population with a reverse nine one one ok you're going to find the problem mr womack is talking about throughout the country guess what we're not going to give you money we got to understand is why are you going to work within and that's why these committees are so important with their voices within a crucible of limited funding sources are going to have to be made i know you could read but which people if you had x y you're not going to get it from mars if your taxpayers have it that's where it's going to come from ultimately we think most jurisdictions are going to say how much layering can we poor the federal government has grants where is and look we also have a deficit is so large that we have what we call pay go on when you can go and put anything on the floor unless it's all already paid for which it has is going to continue to be the constraint because of the war because of the tax cuts because the money is and they are and the deficit is sky high so all this talk about layering and we can meet this this number that number in the other number we need to commit is sit down and make sure everybody knows that the all purpose layering will be possible if your taxpayers are willing to pay for it and then you take the rap because that's what you're going to have to tell them or what i bet most we will learn do is to say we're in the  do what is the optimum thing to do so we need very tough choice making district by district area by area thinking unless you live  in some you know on the east side a man i had where you know a lot of rich people who want to know in every conceivable way if there is an alert i'm trying and trying to i'm trying to trying to make you understand the atmosphere the climate in which we work now and i think i can say without fear of contradiction where we'll be working for many years to come oil prices and food prices only forecast that if anything we are threatened with bottoming out of the standard of living of the united states continuing to just progress automatically that we in the case somebody is going to have to sit down with fema from the local level and help guide sima and then some i've got have to be real clear with their own people our upgraded system consists  a s and much more to be ready on i'm very afraid that if we keep acting like we're going to find an all media system that we will have the opposite effect on people they will think well they'll get to me one way or the other more and your testimony is very important particularly about but what it is said to me that these forms are more necessary now ever because if people have to make choices then i don't know how they're going to make them if they're not all sitting around tables in their own locales with somebody telling the honest to goodness truth i'm going to guess was going to say look in my area i can get to y there because we're going to make up for lots of other things simply by going wherever you are and new york they going to say after nine one one with every penny we have i mean not one one has recreated the homeland security apparatus of the united states of america as i am that hour with learn from these hearings and they educate me profoundly you certainly have done so this is been remarkably useful testimony and i want to thank all of you for coming and for bearing with us while we question the others and for taking our questions which have been put forward to help educate us thank you very much thank you hearing i