# Emergency Reporting Act: What You Need to Know

When major disasters strike and knock out phone lines, internet, or cell service, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) currently has limited requirements to tell the public what happened. This bill changes that by requiring the FCC to investigate and publicly report on communication outages after major disasters, and to improve how the government tracks these problems going forward.

Here's what the bill actually does: When a disaster is serious enough that the FCC activates its Disaster Information Reporting System for at least a week, the agency must now publish three reports. First, within six weeks of the disaster ending, the FCC releases a preliminary report explaining what services went down (internet, phone, cell service), how long they were out, and how many people were affected. Second, within eight months, the FCC must hold at least one public hearing in the affected area where residents, local officials, emergency responders, utility companies, and service providers can discuss what happened and what went wrong. Third, within a year, the FCC publishes a final report with recommendations on how to prevent similar problems in the future. All these reports get posted on the FCC's website for anyone to read.

The bill also requires the FCC to study whether current rules for reporting outages are working well. Specifically, it asks the agency to investigate whether emergency 911 call centers need better information about outages when they happen, whether some outages are slipping through the cracks because they don't meet the current reporting thresholds, and what rule changes might help. This means the FCC will examine whether the current system is actually catching all the problems that matter for public safety.

For everyday people, this means more transparency and accountability when disasters disrupt communications. You'll be able to see official reports about what went wrong, and communities affected by major outages will have a formal voice in discussing solutions. For emergency responders and 911 centers, the improvements to outage reporting could mean they get better information faster when systems fail during crises.

Emergency Reporting Act

Emergency Reporting ActThis bill requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to publicly report on certain activations of the Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS). DIRS is a reporting system, activated during severe weather and other events impacting communications service, through which communications providers report outages and other degradations to service.If the system was activated for at least seven days, the FCC must issue a preliminary a report that includes (1) the number and duration of any service outages, (2) the approximate number of users or the amount of infrastructure potentially affected by a service outage, and (3) the number and duration of any outages at public safety answering points (PSAPs) that prevent the PSAPs from receiving and routing emergency calls. The FCC must also hold at least one public field hearing in the area affected by the event, and it must issue a final report that includes recommendations on how to improve the resiliency of affected networks.Separately, the FCC must publish a general report on (1) the volume and nature of 9-1-1 outages that are not required to be reported under current outage notification rules, and (2) the value to public safety agencies of the inclusion of visual information in outage notifications from communications providers.&nbsp;