Pearl River A key component in ACORN’s family of organizations is the Affiliated Media Foundation Movement (AM/FM), which helps manage some radio stations, assists communities in applying for full-power and low-power noncommercial stations, and provides content to those same stations. In talking to applicants for 100-watt low-power stations about construction costs, some are surprised that on the low-end estimates representing almost 20% of the price is the EAS or Emergency Alert System required by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for every licensed operating station.
There’s nothing simple about this piece of equipment, either. With WAMF-LP in New Orleans our EAS system was fried during a hurricane power surge that knocked out electricity for weeks in the city, and then took what seemed ages to get delivery on an expensive replacement. On the new station we helped build for KEUD-FM in Eudora, Arkansas, we were able to go on the air, but getting all of the parts for the EAS to be fully operational has taken us additional months, labor, and money. Scores of applications we helped communities file for low-power stations with the FCC more than 18-months ago are still pending. In the wake of the Texas floods, one of the applicants in Virginia texted me wondering about the status of their application, because she was worried that her community lacked an emergency alert system. I had no good answer.
I was harping the other day about why we don’t have more warning sirens, but these emergency alerts on radio are triggered by the FCC. How many households still have a radio station on and able to get these warning signals? You might hear them in your car, if you had the radio on, and that’s certainly the last time I can remember hearing such a warning. The FCC also controls cellphone alerts, but many people turn them off on their phones. Reportedly, a new FCC rule will allow alerts to vibrate in hopes of keep them active in 2028, but that also depends on people having their phones ready to rock 24-hours per day. I’m not sure how well that works either. My son showed me how I could screen out calls except for family members in order to prevent middle of the night calls when I’m in another time zone around the world. I’m not sure if emergency calls were blocked as well, but I know a ton of people who turn off their phones at night or leave them at a distance from where they are sleeping. None of this would have helped people in Texas or anywhere else where coverage is spotty and it was also the middle of the night.
It hurts the heart and boggles the mind in this time of climate change and confusion to read about the challenges of disaster warnings in the coordination of various levels of local, state, and federal government systems. The blood starts to boil reading about Texas officials and communities that rejected installing warning systems in these imperiled rural areas and near the children’s camp because of the cost and, incredibly, because the warning would be too loud. Loud is the point, for goodness’ sake! Who among us wouldn’t trade the loss of a night’s sleep for the lives that would be saved? Or, for that matter, pay the couple of dollars on our taxes for the same thing.
I’m writing this sitting in a camp on top of pilings that stretch nine-feet above the ground, several hundred yards from a bayou that feeds into the Pearl River, the borderline between Mississippi and Louisiana. All around me, there is paneling and wainscotting four feet from the floor, which is appealing in what we call a fishing and canoeing camp. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know that the four-foot span of paneling actually marks the level of the 13-foot storm surge the camp took in Katrina almost 20 years ago. Staying at this camp, we are constantly on the alert for high water. We check the levels from the dock daily, and mind every storm alert. Hurricane weather alerts have been good historically, even as the Trump administration degrades them drastically, which probably won’t change until water rises near Mar-de-Lago in Florida.
All the same, it’s still hard not to wonder if we have a reliable warning system in this small community along the water. I doubt it. No matter where we live, we all need to wonder and worry now.