New England stations, listen up!
FEMA will conduct an IPAWS test in the New England states in September. And the first of three planning webinars about this regional event will take place this month for the benefit of stations and emergency personnel.
Radio World has learned that the test will be conducted in cooperation with state broadcast associations of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Broadcast and cable operators in those states will receive a National Periodic Test (NPT) message via IPAWS. To actively participate in the voluntary test, stations need to configure their EAS device to forward an incoming NPT message immediately.
FEMA IPAWS will conduct a webinar in support the New England Regional test on Wednesday, July 22 at 10 a.m.
“This introductory webinar will be directed toward station managers, operations managers, news people and state and local emergency management officials to provide some basic information about IPAWS alerting capabilities and their possible role in the September IPAWS test,” according to the email.
Two technical webinars are planned for Aug. 19 and Sept. 3 in which IPAWS officials will walk engineers through configuring their EAS device for NPT in a step-by-step process for the various types of EAS devices in the field.
The actual regional test will be conducted Wednesday, Sept. 16.
