Innovative Cable TV reminds its customers that the National Emergency Alert System, which provides information locally through the Virgin Islands Territorial Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Alert System, will display critical disaster preparedness alerts on Channel 3 on Innovative Cable TV’s system in the districts of St. Thomas-St. John and St. Croix.
Terry Falls, senior vice president of Network Operation for the Innovative Companies said, “When an alert is sent to our system, regardless of the channel that a viewer may be watching at the time, the digital converter will automatically retune the channel to Channel 3 so that all viewers can see the message displayed. In March 2011, Innovative participated in a very important regional test to ensure that both cable TV systems, Innovative Cable TV St. Thomas-St. John and Innovative Cable TV St. Croix, were ready to provide the requisite alert in the event of an emergency. The initial tests were successful.”
Innovative Cable TV performs monthly internal tests of the Emergency Alert System to ensure that all procedures are functional. Customers may have already seen the alerts when the heavy rains occurred in the territory during the month of June.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, the EAS is a national public warning system that requires broadcasters, cable television systems, wireless cable systems, satellite digital audio radio service (SDARS) providers and direct broadcast satellite (DBS) providers to provide the communications capability to the president to address the American public during a national emergency. State and local authorities may use the system to deliver important emergency information, such as AMBER alerts and weather information targeted to specific areas. The FCC, in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service (NWS), implements the EAS at the federal level.