WASHINGTON-Key Republican and Democratic senators officially unveiled legislation overhauling the nation’s half-century-old emergency warning system by tapping into wireless and other digital technologies to alert citizens to real-time emergency situations.
The introduction of the Warning, Alerts, and Response Network Act was announced late Thursday by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on disaster prevention and prediction, and Sen Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), ranking member of the panel, even as another monster hurricane-Rita-was closing in on Gulf states.
Co-sponsoring the measure are Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Co-Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), and Sens. David Vitter (R-La.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.). Lott’s coastal Mississippi home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
“Without a way to properly alert those in danger, even the most accurate of disaster predictions is useless,” said DeMint. “We need an effective and consistent method to warn Americans when their life is at risk, and this bill will allow us to establish the needed alerts. While the warnings in advance of Katrina were very widely disseminated, we learned that the threat to life continues after the storm passes. The WARN Act will provide tools to alert communities about the provision of ice, water and other life-sustaining resources.”
The bill, among other things, would:
- Establish a network for the transmission of alerts across a broad variety of media, including cell phones, Blackberrys and other wireless devices; digital, analog, cable and satellite television and radio networks; as well as nontraditional media such as sirens and “radios-on-a-stick.”
- Provide federal, state and local emergency managers with alert tools and the ability to send out geographically targeted alerts only to those communities at risk.
- Establish a grant program to help remote communities install sirens and other devices because of the lack of quality telecommunications infrastructure, ensuring that individuals in communities in “tornado alley,” some of which may not have high cell-phone penetration, still get warnings about threatening storms.
- Provide at least $250 million for the research, development and deployment of technologies and equipment to operate the alert systems.
