DHS revamps emergency alert system

The Homeland Security Department is overhauling and expanding its emergency broadcast system, known as the Digital Emergency Alert System, so warnings will reach more people faster and are localized.

The enhancement will, in time, bring alerts to the wireless phone of every parent, the BlackBerry of every emergency responder and the computer screen of anyone in need of an immediate update.

Federal Emergency Management Agency officials said by the end of this year, every Atlantic and Gulf Coast state's emergency management office will be tapped into the revamped DEAS, and by the end of 2007, every state will be connected. Officials said they do not yet know when individual citizens will receive alerts.

"It goes way beyond television and radio," which were the first means of mass-notification, said FEMA Director R. David Paulison at a Wednesday demonstration of the new system. "It's going to be quicker and more efficient."

Under the new DEAS, voice and text messages will be sent out to wireless phones. Highway message boards -- the same ones that notify travelers of an Amber Alert or a traffic backup -- will be able to carry warnings as well.

The standard means of transmitting alerts since the Cold War -- radio and television -- will not be left out; federal officials said they will include digital TV in the revamped plans. At the Wednesday event, they praised the efforts of the Public Broadcasting System, which will carry distress signals to satellite stations.

The public-private initiative will cost $5.5 million during its initial implementation, officials said. It will use the existing communications network for delivering its messages, and will be designed to avoid the sort of logjam that occurred in New York City on Sept. 11 and during the August 2003 blackout in the Northeast and parts of Canada.

"Eventually, it will be a warning system for all hazards that can reach all devices," said John Lawson, the president and chief executive of the Association of Public Television Stations.

The enhanced DEAS also will send out messages describing risks to specific areas, said Kenneth Rapuano, the deputy assistant for homeland security to President Bush. Improving emergency broadcasts means transmitting a message to a larger number of people, and the system will do that, he added.

But while the system will cast a wider net, DHS will still pull the strings, and it can tailor a message in order to go out to a select crowd on a "need-to-know basis," Lawson said. Recipients ultimately will be able to control whether or not the government tells them of a potential emergency, and will be able to opt out if a cell-phone owner, for example, does not want to get the text message.

"I don't know why anyone would want to do that," Paulison said.