Wireless Emergency Alerts and the Emergency Alert System

<RULE> FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 10</CFR> <DEPDOC>[PS Docket Nos. 15-91 and 15-94; DA 25-12; FR ID 273471]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Wireless Emergency Alerts and the Emergency Alert System</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; announcement of effective date. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, as directed by the Federal Communications Commission (Commission), the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (Bureau) adopts implementation parameters for multilingual Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). The Bureau is requiring commercial mobile service providers who participate in WEA (Participating CMS Providers) to support multilingual templates for the most commonly issued and most time-sensitive types of alerts in English, the next thirteen most commonly spoken languages in the United States, and American Sign Language (ASL). The non-ASL templates must be customizable with event-specific information that utilize four fillable elements: the name of the sending agency, the location, the time, and an optional URL. The alert templates for ASL are non-fillable and signed by a Certified Deaf Interpreter (CDI). The Bureau requires WEA-capable mobile devices to accompany the display of templates with the corresponding English-language fillable template. The Bureau also announces the effective date of a previously announced amendment that was contingent on this action. Together, these steps further the Commission's goal of ensuring that WEA remains an essential and effective public safety tool that allows alert originators to warn their communities of danger and advise them to take protective action. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The amendments to 47 CFR 10.480 (amendatory instruction 4) and 47 CFR 10.500(e) (amendatory instruction 6), published at 88 FR 86824 on December 15, 2023, are effective on June 5, 2028. The amendments in this document to 47 CFR 10.480 (amendatory instruction 2) and 47 CFR 10.500(e) (amendatory instruction 3) are delayed indefinitely. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Joshua Gehret, Cybersecurity and Communications Reliability Division, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, (202) 418-7816 or <E T="03">joshua.gehret@fcc.gov.</E> For the Paperwork Reduction Act information collection requirements contained in this document, contact Nicole Ongele, Office of Managing Director, Performance and Program Management, 202-418-2991 or <E T="03">PRA@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Report and Order, PS Docket Nos. 15-91 and 15-94, adopted and released on January 8, 2025. The full text of this document is available at <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-25-12A1.pdf.</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities (braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice), 202-418-0432 (TTY). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Procedural Matters</HD> <E T="03">Regulatory Flexibility Act.</E> The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, as amended (RFA) requires that an agency prepare a regulatory flexibility analysis for notice and comment rulemakings, unless the agency certifies that “the rule will not, if promulgated, have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.” Accordingly, the Bureau has prepared a Supplemental Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (Supplemental FRFA) concerning the potential impact of the adopted rules in this Report and Order, on small entities. <E T="03">Congressional Review Act:</E> The Bureau has determined that this rule is non-major under the Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. 804(2). The Commission will send a copy of the Order to Congress and the Government Accountability Office pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A). <E T="03">Paperwork Reduction Act Analysis.</E> This document contains proposed new or modified information collection requirements. All such new or modified information collection requirements will be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review under section 3507(d) of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA). OMB, the general public, and other Federal agencies are invited to comment on any new or modified information collection requirements contained in this proceeding. In addition, we note that, pursuant to the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002, the Commission previously sought, but did not receive, specific comments on how the Commission might further reduce the information collection burden for small business concerns with fewer than 25 employees. The Bureau does not believe that the new or modified information collection requirements we adopt here will be unduly burdensome on small businesses. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Report and Order</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Templates for Common and Time-Sensitive Emergencies</HD> 1. As directed by the Commission, we take steps to implement multilingual WEA by adopting templates to improve the availability of WEA. We require Participating CMS Providers to support multilingual templates for the following eighteen alerts: tornado emergency, tornado warning, flash flood emergency, flash flood warning, severe thunderstorm, snow squall, dust storm, hurricane, storm surge, extreme wind, test alert, fire, tsunami, earthquake, boil water, avalanche, hazardous materials, and 911 outage. We decline to adopt evacuation and shelter-in-place templates and defer consideration of other templates at this time. 2. To determine the most commonly issued alerts, we analyzed publicly available Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) data from 2022 and identified nine alert types that we determined were among the most commonly issued alerts that were appropriate for template alerts. We proposed templates for: tornados, flash floods, severe thunderstorms, snow squalls, dust storms, hurricanes, storm surges, extreme wind, and test alerts. No commenter objected to our analysis or suggested that we failed to identify a common category of alert. We therefore conclude that these emergencies are common enough to merit the creation of multilingual templates to extend the reach of WEA. The National Weather Service (NWS) recommended that we adopt two templates for tornados and two templates for flash floods: one emergency version for each that conveys “the highest threat to life and property” and one warning version for each that provides advance notice of the disaster. We agree that both versions of the tornado and flash flood alerts have different situational uses for notifying the public about the urgency of the emergency, and it would benefit the public for alert originators to have access to both as multilingual alerts. We therefore adopt both the emergency and warning versions of the templates for tornado and flash flood warnings. 3. Similarly, in light of the record, we conclude the most time-sensitive emergencies are: earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, hazardous materials, avalanches, boil water advisory, and 911 outages. In the <E T="03">WEA Multilingual Public Notice,</E> we expressed our view that each of these emergencies poses imminent danger to the public and that time is of the essence with respect to taking any protective actions. As no commenters objected to our analysis with respect to earthquakes, boil water advisories, and avalanches being time-sensitive emergencies, we adopt these templates. We adopt the 911 outage template as well, agreeing with APCO International that the template is an additional tool that would be useful to emergency communication centers to inform the public of an outage. 4. Some commenters argue against the adoption of template-based alerts covering fire warning, tsunami, and hazardous materials emergencies, stating that the appropriateness of the calls to action included in those proposed templates may vary depending on the severity of the emergency, whether the alert is sent during or in advance of the disaster, and location of the recipient in relation to the emergency. For example, the City of Berkeley argues that the fire warning “will not be used by public officials in California” because the protective action proposed by the Bureau's fire warning template—to evacuate—does not align with California's statewide evacuation terminology in which “evacuation warning means prepare to evacuate . . . .” We disagree. The standard statewide evacuation terminology for California cited by the City of Berkeley describes an “Evacuation Warning” as a “[p]otential threat to life and/or property. Those who require additional time to evacuate, and those with pets and livestock should leave now.” In other words, this terminology does not advise the public to solely prepare for an evacuation, but to begin evacuating. This is consistent with our proposed fire warning template, which also advises the public to evacuate the location that is the subject of the alert. By contrast, California's terminology describes an “Evacuation Order” as “a lawful order to leave now” as “the area is lawfully closed to public access.” We believe that harmonizing the fire warning template with this “Evacuation Order” language would reduce its flexibility, as emergency managers may wish to advise the public to evacuate a location even if there is no formal government order to do so. We also hesitate to accept the City of Berkeley's assertion that no alerting official will use the template in the State of California when the State itself has not filed comments that take this position. We expect that emergency managers, including those in California, will be best posit ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 146k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━