Would you like to be part of KBOO's Disaster Prep committee to help KBOO develop a plan for disasters? Join KBOO’s Disaster Preparedness and safety committee! Our next quarterly meeting will take place Thursday March 22nd from noon to 1:30 pm at KBOO – 20 Southeast 8th Avenue in Portland. Come help us make a plan to ensure that KBOO has infrastructure and power to be able to provide news and information to our community during times of natural or unnatural disaster.
From the Media Security and Reliability Council:
When assessing potential vulnerabilities, local radio stations are encouraged to review the following best practices recommendations made by MSRC I:
• Radio broadcasters should have appropriate physical security, augmented by security personnel and/or video surveillance at their key facilities, including studios/newsrooms, satellite transmit and receive sites and antenna/transmitter sites.
• Radio Broadcasters should employ diverse power grid sources wherever feasible.
• Radio broadcasters should take appropriate measures to provide backup power capabilities for their key facilities, including studios/newsrooms, satellite communications and transmitters.
• Radio broadcasters with local news origination should ensure that they have robust and redundant ways to communicate with external news services and remote news teams, such as the use of mobile radio and Internet to augment cell phones.
• Radio broadcasters should have backup signal feeds to their primary satellite transmit and receive sites.
• Radio broadcasters should have redundant signal paths to their primary and backup transmission facilities.
• Radio broadcasters with local news origination should plan to have emergency origination capability at a separate location from their primary studio (e.g., backup studio, transmitter site, remote van, another station, etc).
• Radio broadcasters with local news origination should have a remote vehicle, or some means of delivering live news and information from a remote site.
• Radio broadcasters should have the capability of receiving a remote feed at an additional site from their primary studio (e.g., directly at their tower site, at a backup studio, etc).
• Radio broadcasters should have a backup satellite transmitter and receiver, or an alternate means (e.g., a Satellite Radio receiver, a dedicated phone line or a streaming audio Internet connection) to send and receive signals from and to national news services in emergency situations.
• Radio broadcasters should have a backup transmitter, and should attempt to make practical arrangements for geographic diversity where possible (e.g., provisions for emergency use of other backup transmitter/antenna facilities in the community or other means).
• With the cooperation of federal and local policy makers, all radio broadcasters in a market should collaborate to increase their collective site diversity and redundancy, including their collective news studios, operations, satellite transmit and receive facilities and transmitter and antenna sites.