EBS Alert

I had only been working part-time in radio for a few months. My full-time job was taking a full schedule of broadcasting classes as a new student at San Antonio College (SAC). My well-qualified professors at SAC included Jean Longwith, Jeff Hinger, Don Couser and others.

Being only 19 years old, I was very fortunate to get a job at KEEZ-FM, which was on the 29th floor of the Tower Life Building in downtown San Antonio. My air name was Dave Daniels. I was on the air, but my main job was to baby-sit a Harris radio automation system that used six ten-inch reel-to-reel tape machines in a massive piece of equipment that sat in the KEEZ lobby for all our visitors to see.

It was February 20, 1971. On this particular weekend morning, I was alone, as usual. The news Teletype and weather wire machines were in a small closet just off the front lobby. In addition to watching over the automation system, I was supposed to check and clear the paper behind the wire machines several times an hour. If I didn't, the paper would start to pile up into a complete mess from which it would take a very long time to recover. Another possible problem, a paper jam, happened much less frequently. But…the chances of getting extremely ink-stained hands, while removing the jam and rethreading the paper, was very high.

At 8:33 CST the alarm bell started ringing on the UPI news wire machine. Casually, I strolled over to it expecting to see some bulletin about the Viet Nam war or the standard Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) alert test that happened every weekend. If it was the EBS test, I would have to log it into both the program and transmitter logs. Instead, I was shocked to see what appeared to be an honest-to-goodness Emergency Action Notification from the President of the United States telling all stations to "cease broadcasting." The first line included a "Message Authenticator" word repeated twice. The procedure was to open a special envelope that was always kept in the control room and verify that the "Message Authenticator" in the special envelope matched the one received on the UPI newswire.

I ran back to the control room and with unsteady hands ripped open the "special" envelope. I quickly scanned the envelope contents. The "Message Authenticators" matched!

Oh! My god!

This is it!

We're at WAR!!

I freaked!

After a long moment, I calmed down just enough to switch on the EBS monitor in the control room so I could listen to WOAI. WOAI as a primary EBS station would stay on the air and be the official source of national emergency information. WOAI was still doing normal programming. I was STILL freaking. I wasn't certain as to what I should do. Should I run that special tape cartridge with the EBS information our program director had recorded who knows how long ago? Should I prepare to take the station off the air? I looked out the window down to the streets 29 stories below. There were no sirens or emergency vehicles racing through the streets. There seemed to be no panic…except for mine.

With all the military installations in and around San Antonio, I had always been told that San Antonio would be a primary target for missile attacks or whatever, if war ever broke out. I never took the time to find out if it was true, but I grew up believing it...Especially after living through the Cuban Missile Crisis as a child.

Still shaking, I decided to pick up the phone and call the program director, Lowell Huffman. He's older than I am. Maybe he will know what to do.

"Lowell?"

"It's Dave, down at the station. Uhhh...this thing came across the wire just now and..."

I read the EBS Alert to him and told him that the “Message Authentication” in the envelope matched.

Lowell said, "Hang on. Lemme turn the radio on and see if anybody else is off the air. No...everybody else still seems to be on the air."

He asked me to re-read the wire copy to him again and to check the word against the list again. They STILL matched! I heard the UPI alarm going off again, so I told Lowell to "hang on."

I dropped the phone (there weren't any cordless telephones back then), and raced back to the closet and saw the following on the UPI wire machine:

MESSAGE AUTHENTICATOR: HATEFULNESS/HATEFULNESS

CANCEL MESSAGE SENT AT 09:33EST REPEAT CANCEL MESSAGE SENT AT

09:33EST

MESSAGE AUTHENTICATOR: HATEFULNESS/HATEFULNESS

29 FEB 09:59EST

The guy who typed the message must have really been nervous too. He typed the wrong date.

"Lowell?"

"Looks like it was a mistake. Thank God! That really scared me!"

Lowell grumbled something about me "doing the right thing by calling him" and hung up.

I immediately smoked five cigarettes in a row in an attempt to calm down.

The alarm rang a few more times that morning advising all stations that "the wrong message had been sent." Later in the day UPI even ran a story with quotes from freaked out folks from across the United States. I heard a rumor later that WOAI had come extremely close to running their "EBS Emergency Tape Cartridge" and following emergency procedures. A handful of stations around the country DID run the emergency message and go off the air causing some isolated pockets of panic.

Saint Louis broadcaster, Mike Anderson, who was at KTEM in Temple at the time of the EBS Alert, saved the actual UPI copy from that day. Through the years, the paper has faded from yellow to almost orange. However, for me, the memory of that day will never fade...even in the slightest.

Dave Jagger

Dave Jagger In The 70s

Editors Note: You can check out what Dave is currently doing at: www.daveandgeri.com

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