FCC Annual DIRS Exercise Scheduled for June 2-3, 2020

In preparation for the 2020 hurricane season, the FCC will conduct an annual Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) exercise on June 2-3, 2020. The FCC often activates DIRS during times of crisis, such as hurricanes and wildfires, providing a system for broadcasters to voluntarily report their operational status to the FCC and request assistance. Participation in the annual DIRS exercise is voluntary and may help your company to confirm that it can access the DIRS system, train new employees to become familiar with DIRS reporting process and update your DIRS contact information.

The exercise will begin with the FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau sending a mock activation letter on June 1 to all registered DIRS participants. The letter will clearly state that this is only an exercise and not a real DIRS activation and will provide a list of pre-selected counties that make up the disaster area for this exercise. Broadcasters will be asked to provide data on any communications assets (e.g., wireline, wireless, broadband and broadcast) that your company has in the affected area. As this is only an exercise, the Bureau does not expect to receive actual counts of outages. If your company does not have any communications assets in the affected counties, you can still participate in the exercise by reporting mock data for the pre-selected counties.

The FCC asks that participants provide their initial data sets by 10 a.m. EST on June 2 and an update to this data by June 3 at 10 a.m. EST. The Bureau will send a deactivation letter by 1 p.m. EST on June 3 letting all participants know that the exercise has been completed.

If you would like to participate in the exercise, please email the FCC at julia.tu@fcc.gov and michael.caiafa@fcc.gov with the following information:

1. Name of your company;
2. Names of all participants from your company;
3. Email and phone numbers of all participants from your company; and
4. Specific geographic areas (counties, state) that you would like to have included in the disaster area for this exercise (optional).

No response is necessary if you do not wish to participate in this exercise. For additional information, you may email or call Bureau staff: Julia Tu (202) 418-0731, julia.tu@fcc.gov; Michael Caiafa (202) 418-1311, michael.caiafa@fcc.gov or David Ahn (202) 418-0853, david.ahn@fcc.gov.