The Paws That Refreshes

FEMA/DHS IPAWS PEP expansion project

Depending on your generation, you'll always remember where you were when JFK was shot (too young), the Challenger exploded (in Harmon's coffee shop on 49th St.), or the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 (on my living room ceiling). Well, after today, you will always remember where you were when you first experienced IPAWS.

A collaboration between the FCC and FEMA, IPAWS stands for the Public Alert Warning System. Perhaps the sorriest I-acronym since IWORI (Injured Workers of Rhode Island), it sounds like something Steve Jobs considered--and rejected--as the name for a handheld device for pets. It will debut on radio and TV stations today at 2 P.M. EST, four epic minutes of it. I plan to catch it on WFMU, what about you?

Initiated by George Bush's 2006 Executive Order #13407, IPAWS comes with a Vision, "Timely Alert and Warning to American People in the preservation of life and property," a Mission: "Provide integrated services and capabilities....," and three Strategic Goals. You can read all about them on the FEMA website and even watch a video so mind-numbing it makes you wish for a natural disaster or terrorist attack.

It boils down to an update of that incredibly annoying buzzing on the radio followed by the message, "This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System. If this were a real emergency...." Just ten years after September 11, 2011, which somehow did not manage to trigger the EBS (actually by then the EAS), we've got a brandy new system--and no color codes.

Heck of a job, Pawsy

I don't know if they've given much though down at FEMA and the FCC to a mascot. It's the offseason, so Paws from the Pawtucket Red Sox should be available. I feel safer already.

UPDATE - 12:44 P.M. - The nationwide test on all radion and TV outlets has been reduced in length from 3 minutes to 30 seconds. FEMA and FCC panicking that people will think it's a real emergency. No confirmation that the reassuring voice they plan to use is Julie from Amtrak's 800 number.