While I was driving the kids around on the weekend one of the radio stations announced that there would be the first ever nation wide test of the Emergency Broadcast System. My almost immediate reaction was something like “isn’t Twitter now the Emergency Broadcast system”? I wound up forgetting about the whole thing seconds later (probably because I arrived at whatever place I was picking the kids up). Then the actual test took place yesterday and wound up failing as many TV stations simply didn’t get the proper signal. Of course, I learned about this test failure the way I learn about all breaking news these days: on Twitter.
Now I am hoping that whoever is in charge of this system at FEMA and other federal agencies learns the real lesson from this test. In 2011 an emergency broadcast system that is based on radio and TV might as well be based on printing the alert in the newspaper the next day. Fixing the problem with the TV stations that didn’t participate will probably be hugely costly. Instead they should just make it a priority to connect the alert system to Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Skype. All of these have alerting functionality built right into the service and alert via email and SMS. The alerts should contain a link to a White House web site where the details can be provided.
Not only would the alert spread much more effectively, but the system would be much more resilient to failure. After all, that’s what the Internet is superbly good at: routing around problems. I remember well that on 9/11 the only communication that didn’t jam up for me was IM. So folks in Washington: please bring the Emergency Broadcast system into the 21st century.
