Access to emergency alert system (EAS) warnings isn’t...
Access to emergency alert system (EAS) warnings isn’t just a Spanish-language issue, but talk about it “has basically been an English-Spanish conversation,” said Asian Americans Advancing Justice. The Asian nonprofit group, which also goes by the AAJC acronym, backed a…
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Minority Media and Telecommunications Council FCC proposal for multilingual broadcast alerts. But “simply concentrating on Spanish” EAS alerts “or the number of markets with Spanish-language stations ignores significant limited English proficient (LEP) Asian American populations who do not receive in-language warnings about emergencies,” said AAJC. MMTC’s proposal for backup stations to transmit alerts in languages other than English when nearby non-English stations are off-air raised implementation questions for some industry commenters, while others backed much of the plan (CD May 30 p10). MMTC had cited problems with Spanish speakers not getting alerts in New Orleans in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit, which AAJC said affected Asian-Americans, too. “Federal, state, and local authorities responsible for multilingual EAS alerts must use census data and other appropriate demographic surveys and conduct community outreach to assess the languages commonly spoken in any given community,” said an AAJC comment posted Monday in docket 04-296 (http://bit.ly/1tjwcPX). “With this knowledge, authorities at all levels can begin to ensure that language minority communities receive timely and accessible EAS alerts.” MMTC’s proposal “has always focused on all of those who speak languages other than English,” responded President David Honig in an email to us Tuesday. “Those populations sometimes have been misperceived as entirely Spanish speaking. We fully support AAJC’s observations and suggestions."