9/22/20 – The National Weather Service has now introduced county subdivisions in some areas – Duluth, MN; Glasgow, MT; Rapid City, SD  and Tucson, AZ. EAS receivers in these areas should be programmed to respond to the subdivisions. Instructions are in the receiver manuals.

In addition, the NWS plans to install this capability at the Las Vegas office in the near future and then at other offices. Details on the Las Vegas proposal are provided here.

If you have technical questions about this new service, you may contact wayne.hart@noaa.gov or 240-938-1629.

For NWS Policy questions, you may contact  timothy.schott@noaa.gov or 301-427-9336

9/17/20 – The FEMA and the National Weather Service (NWS) have announced that the NWS will now be relaying “Non-Weather Emergency Messages (NWEMs, in bureaucratic speak) through the IPAWS – replacing the HazCollect program.
Right now, this is operating on a test basis in a limited number of markets during Q4 of 2020, with a national rollout in 2021.

8/26/20 – Digital Alert Systems has prepared the small upload you need to make your EAS box work with the new FEMA certificate. The old one expires on October 28th. You can get the new one here

7/23/20 – The FEMA certificate for CAP will expire on October 28th. Sage EAS boxes will require an update for this and a root certificate for downloading audio from IPAWS.  Digital Alert Systems also plans a tiny file to update the DASDEC machines. As of now, Gorman-Redlich says they do not need to do anything.

7/8/20 – The FCC announced that Form One for the ETRS is not required this year, seeing as there will be no NPT.

7/6/20 – According to the FEMA, support (EOS) for EAS receivers using IPAWS TLS security protocols 1.0 and 1.1 ended on July 6th. The FEMA had delayed this step for some 18 months since the initial EOS was announced, to give stations and entities time to upgrade their firmware. If you do not have TLS 1.2 installed, IPAWS tests and alerts will not function. The FEMA recommends contacting your EAS receiver manufacturer for more information.

At this point, you must have DASDEC 3.1 or later (4.2 is current); Sage needs rev 95 .. the current version; Gorman-Redlich requires at least ver 2.76.3; Trilithic/Viavi must be Version 3.0 or later (V19.10 is current).

6/27/20 – The FEMA has opened a new web page “OpenFEMA” which is a database of all activity on IPAWS since June 2012. The Public Announcement is here.  Documentation is here. 

6/19/20 – The FEMA announced today that the 2020 NPT for the IPAWS has been cancelled. The next test will be in 2021.