Photo By Mary Jenkins | Goodfellow Air Force Base acquired the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System used...... read more read more
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GOODFELLOW AIR FORCE BASE, Texas-- The 17th Civil Engineering Squadron readiness and emergency management flight, recently reached out to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to acquire an additional Emergency Alerting System capability for the base.
It’s called the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System.
IPAWS is FEMA's national system for local alerting that provides authenticated emergency and life-saving information to the public through mobile phones using Wireless Emergency Alerts. This is the system that pushes Amber Alerts. Cell phones and mobile devices receive Wireless Emergency Alerts “based on location,” even if cellular networks are overloaded and can no longer support calls, text and emails. Based on location means that when Goodfellow Command Post Controllers sends an alert message it goes to the area they identify on the map within the base fence line.
FEMA encourages local communities to use the system; one of the best features of IPAWS is you don’t have to be registered in the system to get an alert like you do with other currently used emergency alert notification systems.
The Installation Emergency Manager was required to contact the Texas Division of Emergency Management to validate the specific types of notifications that would be used such as active shooter, bomb threat, sheltering in place, and others before FEMA would agree to authorize the base to use IPAWS.
The next step was to ensure the Command Post Controllers were trained to use IPAWS and had a training plan in place. Once these tasks were accomplished the installation commander, installation emergency manager and the command post technicians were required to sign a three year memorandum of agreement with the FEMA/IPAWS Managers.
The MOA identified the training requirements and rules for using the alerting system. FEMA provides IPAWS at no cost to the government although Goodfellow did have to purchase a cloud based software program from a third party vendor to push the messages. One important caveat is IPAWS can only be used for real world messages, meaning it can’t be used for base exercises.
When Command Post Controllers need to fulfill IPAWS training requirements they log into the IPAWS training lab to send messages.
Article by Mr. Wayne Click, 17th Civil Engineering Squadron, Goodfellow Air Force Base
| Date Taken: | 12.08.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 12.09.2020 17:16 |
| Story ID: | 384606 |
| Location: | GOODFELLOW AIR FORCE BASE, TEXAS, US |
| Web Views: | 78 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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