The Tennessee Association of Broadcasters is very pleased to announce the Nashville Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management and our governing authorities have agreed to proceed with the first phase for a new, modern, Redundant Emergency Alert System (EAS) for Davidson County, in cooperation with Clear Channel Radio in Nashville, the National Weather Service and acting as the state EAS system’s first true “civil emergency authority”. The MOEM has the potential for statewide testing purposes and actual emergency alerts over radio, cable and television and other devices potentially in Davidson County and Middle Tennessee. This new public notification system and initiation has the technical capabilities as a direct-to-local stations alerting operation for many non-weather related emergency messages. This cooperation will allow emergency alert messaging to be transmitted to the Local EAS Primary radio stations in Davidson County and other monitoring stations for broadcast directly to the public in times of emergency at the direction of the Mayor, Governor, or local law enforcement.
It is particularly gratifying to the public broadcasters around Nashville, especially after the devastating floods of May 1st and 2nd, 2011. Tennessee’s broadcasters take their role as first informers in times of crises very, very seriously, especially in our efforts to save the lives and any threat of death or serious bodily harm by broadcasting warnings to the local listening and viewing audiences we serve.
The TAB would like to thank all of the people on our local EAS committee, comprised of members from the local stations and vendors for their hard work over the past few months in achieving this crucial goal. The new equipment has been installed at the Nashville Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management as well as the studio of Clear Channel Radio on Music Row, which could bolster the state’s homeland security and emergency response preparedness capability across Tennessee.