"Doug Smith W9WI" wrote in message
...
Maximo Lachman wrote:
according to:
http://www.paksplace.com/alert-details.htm
which has the following story also:

WHY WORRY ABOUT WHO OWNS THE MEDIA?
MoveOn Bulletin Op-Ed by Eli Pariser
It's like something out of a nightmare, but it really happened:

At 1:30 on a cold January night, a train containing hundreds of
thousands of gallons of toxic ammonia derails in Minot, North Dakota.
Town officials try to sound the emergency alert system, but it isn't
working.

I've seen this story posted in several forums. And it brings up a
question:

How many people are actually listening to the radio in Minot, North
Dakota at 1:30 in the morning??? Will I need *both* hands to count them?

Even if there *had* been people at the Minot radio stations, and they'd
promptly aired the warning, virtually nobody would have heard it.

Even more crucial to the argument, no one in government knew how to activate
the EAS system, which would have made an automatic insertion of the warning
on all stations possible.

The stations were there and on the air with a system, EAS, at the ready. The
authorities had no clue how to use it.

And you are right. Nationally, at that hour, less than a half-percent of the
population is listening to the radio. What good would an announcement have
done anyway?