FILE - An emergency alert is displayed on a cellphone, Oct. 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)
Warning: This may be an actual emergency — as far as emergencies about emergencies go, at least.
The recently defunded nonprofit corporation that distributed federal money to public media stations across the United States is warning of another casualty when it shuts down next month: the resilience of the nation’s emergency alert systems.
In 2022, Congress created the Next Generation Warning System grant program, meant to help stations in rural, tribal and otherwise underserved communities repair and improve the warning systems that tell people about evacuation orders, Amber alerts, tornado warnings, and more.
It authorized $136 million over three years for the program. But CPB, which manages the grant money, is shutting down on Sept. 30 after Congress and President Donald Trump defunded it in July.
That could leave unspent millions in grant dollars that were awarded but not yet paid to stations, imperiling dozens of projects meant to save lives in emergencies. The need for robust and redundant warning systems was made tragically clear in July when Texas floods killed at least 136 people, many in areas with spotty cellphone reception and no siren systems.
Public media is often on the front lines of emergency communications, able to reach areas with unreliable cell reception or broadband connection.
“Our people really do rely very heavily on us during emergency situations,” said Tami Graham, executive director of KSUT-FM in Ignacio, Colorado, which reaches nearly 300,000 people in four tribes and five counties across the Four Corners region of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. The area is prone to wildfires and flash floods.
“If they’re not able to get an emergency alert on their phone because they don’t have good cell service,” Graham said, “then the radio really is it.”
Money for the Next Generation Warning System program is handled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which grants it to CPB, a nearly 60-year old entity that funnels federal dollars to 1,500 public TV and radio stations across the country.
The reimbursement-style grant could be used to upgrade equipment, expand alerting, or receive training. Stations sorely needed the improvements: Nearly 270 applied in the first round, with 44 awards given totaling $21.6 million. A second round for $48 million drew 175 applications.
In February KSUT was awarded a $537,288 grant to improve seven of its failing, decades-old tower sites. “It’s kind of duct tape and glue, a lot of the equipment at these tower sites,” Graham said.
The money would have covered adding generators, solar panels and batteries to stay on air during power outages, as well as a remote management system to repair sites from afar in the harsh winters, when several are reachable only by snowmobile.
Days after signing the grant contract, KSUT received a stop-work order after FEMA halted spending, which CPB unsuccessfully sued to unfreeze. In April, the station was told it could resume but in May, another stop order came.
Now with CPB shuttering, the corporation told stations it doesn’t know how work will be reimbursed. Graham said that with Congress wiping out $1.1 billion for public media, losing the money for their warning system felt like a “one-two punch.”
“It’s really frustrating because there’s nothing partisan about emergency alerting in rural areas,” she said. “That is just an absolute basic need.”
One of the reasons public media stations sought NGWS grants was to improve ailing infrastructure not designed for a more extreme climate.
KVPR-FM in Fresno, California, has gone off the air for multiple days twice in the last five years due to extreme weather and wildfires knocking out power to its transmitter. The site’s generator ran out of fuel and crews couldn’t reach it to fill up.
“Those are the exact sorts of events that our listeners need to receive the emergency alerts about, yet those are the events that make our site vulnerable and make us unable to send out those alerts,” said Joe Moore, KVPR’s president and general manager.
KVPR won a $38,000 grant to install a backup transmitter that it already owned, but the stop order came just before they put out bids. The consequences spread beyond KVPR’s listening area: It’s one of two lead stations that disseminate alerts to other broadcasters across a six-county area of the San Joaquin Valley.
With the project on hold, Moore said he is hoping a wildfire doesn’t damage the site this season. “We would be off the air for months.”
Turmoil with the grant program comes after experts have been warning for months that staff and funding cuts at FEMA are undermining the country’s disaster resilience. Since January, FEMA has lost staff, cut programs and slowed spending, which experts say undermines the country’s ability to prepare for and recover from disasters.
CPB declined to be interviewed for this story. But in a statement last week, it called on FEMA to “assume responsibility for disbursing the funds, otherwise most of FY22 and all from FY23 and FY24 will go undistributed.”
FEMA this month opened the 2025 NGWS application to states and tribes instead of to CPB. The application was only open for nine days and said only five awardees would be selected, each receiving up to $8 million.
FEMA did not respond to questions about whether it will distribute the already awarded funding itself. Stations like Wyoming PBS, which had a $2.26 million grant to replace equipment at 39 locations, aren’t risking starting work, according to its CEO Joanna Kail.
KSUT in Colorado hopes someone will pay it back for the $13,000 it already spent on a transmitter that simply had to be replaced. But the rest of the project is on hold.
“We’ll just continue to kind of duct tape and glue and fingers crossed that our tower sites remain resilient,” said Graham. “Despite aging equipment.”