Emergency Broadcast

I was driving over to Decatur early this morning to work and listening to some blaring music by Prokofiev on the Champaign NPR station when the loud buzzing signal of the Emergency Broadcast System sounded. Since there hadn't been any warning beforehand, I wondered what the emergency might be. I don't think anyone had launched an attack on the United States, unless George W. Bush had decided it was time for Jeezus to make His Second Coming and launched the missiles, which I suppose is always possible for his sort.

I had heard the System used in an actual emergency once. It was in the early 1980s, and I was living in southwest Michigan. This was the era of Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell, so that was a very scary sound to here. The announcer came on, however, and announced that a waterspout had been sighted on Lake Michigan and was heading toward the vicinity of New Buffalo. Waterspouts rarely turn into major tornadoes, and in any case, I was 25 miles north of there at the time, so I didn't think anything else of it. (The waterspout dissipated before it reached the shore.)

In this case, however, there was no announcement, just silence and static. Perhaps this might happen if Washington, DC were vaporized (one could only hope), but I was more annoyed than scared, so I switched over to my favorite hard rock station out of Springfield. WQLZ was off the air, too.

Next I switched over to WUIS, the NPR station in Springfield. This station was broadcasting its usual Morning Edition news program. After a couple of minutes, the Emergency Broadcasting System alarm went off on this station, as well. When the signal finally ended, the regular broadcast came back on as if nothing were wrong. This happened a second time, and again, the station returned to its regular broadcast.

I thought the entire thing was pretty weird, and by this time, I had arrived at my usual spot to pick up a breakfast pastry and a newspaper. The world apparently wasn't coming to an end, and if someone had dropped a nuclear bomb on Decatur, IL, you probably couldn't tell to look at the place, anyway.

I went into the office and didn't mention it to anyone, but I did bring it up this evening over dinner with Penny. She commented that the same thing happened on the oldies station she likes to listen to -- she was in the shower at the time, and the station was off the air for a few minutes. She kept the radio on and eventually got an explanation from the DJs. Apparently, there was some severe weather in the Washington, DC area this morning, and a lightning strike took out the transformer that powers the Emergency Broadcasting System. The system does have a backup generator, and the server decided that Washington, DC had been destroyed (as I said, one could only hope) and triggered the Emergency Broadcasting System alert nationwide.

If something so common and mundane as a thunderstorm could set off the Emergency Broadcasting System, though, I have to wonder what might set off, say, the Strategic Air Command systems that launch the missiles. Note to myself: Don't eat beans before my next business trip to Washington. We don't want anything to trigger some oversensitive defense system programmed by incompetent public servants.