Television Stations Fail to Caption Emergency Broadcasts

Unfortunately, people with hearing loss are often among the "least powerful", which is a telling indictment in itself. But the fact that our society would allow the lives of so many of our citizens to be endangered by lack of information during the recent fire emergency is deplorable. Shame on us!

If you're not outraged, you don't understand what's happening!

Here's the story:

San Diego recently experienced the worst fire emergency in the county's history. Fourteen people died, hundreds of homes were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of acres burned. Television and radio stations were broadcasting information, advisories, status updates, recommendations and emergency warnings around the clock during the crucial two days of the fire emergency. Those who could hear had easy access to lots of information. For those with hearing loss, much or all of the information was totally inaccessible.

Imagine the situation of a person with hearing loss during the emergency. The outside (and to a lesser extent, inside) air is filled with smoke. Television coverage has shown film after film of raging fires for the past several hours, and the names of the towns and neighborhoods are getting closer and closer to YOUR house. Then you see another film of a 30-foot firewall with the name of YOUR neighborhood. And the crawl at the bottom of the screen says, "YourTown evacuating"!

But there are NO CAPTIONS, so you don't understand what the newscaster is saying, and that's the IMPORTANT STUFF! You jump on the TTY, but your friends don't know any more than you do! Police and fire aren't answering!

Are you supposed to evacuate? If so, where should you go? Are any of the roads around here closed?

You have NO WAY to answer any of these questions. You look outside and the neighborhood appears calm, so you relax a bit and go back to the television.

Twenty minutes later, the stuff on TV is much the same. You glance out your window and see your neighbors throwing stuff in their car and driving off! You try to talk to them, but you're stressed and they're in a hurry, and you don't understand what they're saying. You try to give them paper and a pen, but they shove it away, jump in their car, and drive off!

What to do?

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Did that scenario happen during the fire? Probably something very much like it did.

I haven't heard anyone tell that story, but I also haven't talked to all 250,000 San Diegans with hearing loss. As far as we know, no one died because of the lack of captioning, and for that we should all be grateful.

But that doesn't excuse the television stations for abrogating their responsibility to make ALL emergency information accessible to people with hearing loss. After all, the FCC requires them to do so; failure to comply is not just immoral; it's illegal!

Following the San Diego fires, Hearing Loss Network filed formal complaints (see below) with the FCC regarding this illegal behavior on the part of local stations, and we encouraged others to do the same. Federal law requires that the stations respond to the complaint within 30 days.

If you'd like to follow this evolving story, please point your browser to:
http://www.hearinglossnetwork.org/serv/advcy/fire/fire.htm.

Responses from the stations are due by November 27. We'll post 'em when we get 'em. So mark your calendar to check the site at the end of November.

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Here is the text of the complaint that was sent to the FCC and copied to the television stations on October 28:

I wish to file a formal complaint against the following San Diego, CA television stations for failure to provide accessibility of emergency video programming (closed captioning) to persons with hearing disabilities:

XETV Channel 6 (Cable 6)
KFMB Channel 8 (Cable 8)
KGTV Channel 10 (Cable 10)
KUSI Channel 51 (Cable 9)

During the recent wild fire emergency, large areas of metro San Diego were threatened with firestorms, over 300 homes were burned, and several people died. Televised information included recommended and mandated evacuations, the location of fire "hot spots", a plethora of safety instructions, the location of shelters, how to obtain additional information, and a huge amount of additional emergency information. Throughout the crucial two days of this emergency (Sunday, October 26, 2003 and Monday, October 27, 2003), these stations provided ongoing coverage of the emergency, but failed to provide substantial portions of the information in a format that is accessible to people with hearing loss.

Failure to make emergency information accessible to the 250,000 San Diegans with hearing loss placed their lives at risk, and is inconsistent with their civic responsibilities. I request that you intervene with these organizations and help them to develop a plan to ensure that their future emergency broadcasts comply with your regulations. I will be happy to assist in this effort however I can.

Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,
Larry Sivertson

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