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Citizens Radio ReviewCommunity radio and low-power FM, explained

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Desk 06 · Emergency Broadcasting

Emergency broadcasting for community stations

The Emergency Alert System, NOAA Weather Radio and the storm playbook: what a low-power station must do, may do and should do when disaster takes over.

Battery radio and a weather radio receiver side by side on a shelf with a flashlight, spare batteries and a hand written phone tree taped to the wall

When the tornado warning sounds, the smallest station on the dial becomes part of the public safety system, or discovers why it should have prepared to be. This desk explains the machinery in volunteer terms: the Emergency Alert System and its coded digital headers, the weather wire that feeds it, the seven NOAA Weather Radio channels that deliver official warnings, and the station-side habits that keep a community station useful when cell towers fail.

Nothing here replaces the FCC rulebook, and our plain-language EAS beginner’s guide says exactly where the legal duty stops for LPFM stations and where the neighborhood duty begins. The storm playbook turns that line into a checklist a station can tape beside the console.

In this desk

  1. Volunteer broadcasting by lantern light during a storm blackout with a battery radio, a laptop on reduced brightness and a laminated checklist clipped to the console

    A community station’s storm playbook

    When the warning sounds, the smallest station in town may be the only media outlet still running on generator power and volunteer nerve, and the difference is a playbook written on a calm day.

  2. Weather radio receiver with its warning light glowing amber on a shelf above a broadcast console, a city under storm clouds visible through the window

    The Emergency Alert System for beginners

    The attention signals on your radio during a tornado warning are the third generation of a system built against nuclear war, and community stations sit closer to its front line than any network.

Two neighbouring desks extend this one: Stations Near You and Start a Station. The magazine’s method is stated on the editorial policy page.