Gardner bill would advance U.S. warning systems, prevent false threat alarms

U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) wants to help the United States avoid a repeat of the widespread panic that resulted from the January false ballistic missile alert in Hawaii that turned out to be a state emergency management agency drill.

Sen. Gardner on Feb. 6 introduced the bipartisan Authenticating Local Emergencies and Real Threats (ALERT) Act, S. 2385, a measure aimed at strengthening U.S. emergency alert systems across government sectors that would prohibit state and local governments from issuing missile-threat alerts and give that sole authority to the federal government.

“Our national integrated public alert system is not something we can afford to get wrong,” said Sen. Gardner, who was joined by U.S. Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) in introducing S. 2385.

“What happened in Hawaii can never happen again — people terrified by the false alert of a system that must have absolute confidence,” said Gardner, a member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet. “We need to make sure we have safe and reliable protocols in place that quickly alert Americans about serious threats, whether those threats be fast-moving wildfires or actual ballistic missile launches from rogue states like North Korea.”

Typically, according to the senator’s office, state and local governments assume responsibility for issuing threat warnings for wildfires, weather-related emergencies and other hazards. However, their alert systems and procedures vary widely across the nation.

If enacted, the bill also would improve how states and localities utilize the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) platform, according to a summary from Gardner’s office, and FEMA would be directed to develop protocol for testing incident-management and warning systems used by states and localities and to ensure they meet any FEMA technical requirements, among other provisions.

“States are laboratories of democracy. They should not be the laboratories of missile alerts,” said Sen. Schatz, the ranking member of the Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet Subcommittee. “The people who know first should be the people who tell the rest of us. This legislation makes clear that the authority to send missile alerts rests with the federal government.”

S. 2385 has been referred to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for consideration.