Cell phones, televisions and radios are going to start screeching Wednesday afternoon, but there’s a good reason.
Officials are set to conduct a nationwide test of the federal emergency alert system, sending a signal through electronic devices across the U.S. The one-minute test is set to take place at 2:20 p.m., EDT, and will be run simultaneously across all time zones (that means 1:20 p.m. Central Time, 12:20 p.m. Mountain Time and 11:20 a.m. Pacific Time on the West Coast.
Most Americans with wireless cellular devices will receive an emergency alert message on their phones, as will most whose televisions or radios are on when the test occurs.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is conducting the test in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission. Emergency alert messages that make up the test are divided into two groups — the Emergency Alert System for radios and televisions, and the Wireless Emergency Alerts for wireless phones. Both are scheduled to happen at once.
Wednesday’s test will be the seventh nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (the six previous tests were conducted between November 2011 and August 2021). This will be the third nationwide test of wireless alerts, and the second nationwide test transmitted to all cellphones, FEMA said in a statement.
As the Wireless Emergency Alert test is sent out to phones, the Emergency Alert System test will be sent to televisions and radios.
“With the combination, you’re going to catch a wide swath of people,” Joseph Trainor, a core faculty member at the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center, who studies the design of disaster warning systems and how they operate, with a particular focus on mobile warning systems and smart warning systems, according to a CBS News report. Trainor has worked with government agencies before, in the U.S. and abroad, to develop their emergency warning systems and procedures.
“We know that they are effective systems,” Trainor told CBS News. “Like any system, there are strengths and weaknesses. How many characters you can use, how much you can transmit, how fast you can get it out. Every system has limits, and that’s why we tell people, when we are giving advice about building warning systems, you don’t ever want to rely on just one thing.”
The wireless portion of the test will be launched through FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, which the agency describes as “a centralized internet-based system administered by FEMA that enables authorities to send authenticated emergency messages to the public through multiple communications networks.” It will be administered using a code sent to cellphones, according to FEMA.
Wireless alerts are created by authorized federal, state, local, tribal and territorial government agencies, and sent to participating wireless providers through FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, a platform that unifies national alert systems for a range of mediums and allows officials to send authenticated emergency messages quickly to the public through multiple communications networks, including television, phone and radio.
Wireless providers that participate in the integrated public system then dispatch alerts from cell towers to compatible phones in geo-targeted areas.
“The idea is that all of these systems are trying to work together to get information out, in as many ways as possible, to the right people,” Trainor told CBS News. “So that folks have the information to make good choices about the risks around them.”
FEMA says no personal data is collected from anyone’s devices in the process.
Cell towers will broadcast the emergency alert test for 30 minutes, starting at approximately 2:20 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, but each phone should only receive it once. During that half-hour, wireless phones that are turned on, not in “airplane mode” and compatible with the alerts should receive a test message, as long as they are located within a certain range of an active cell tower and their wireless provider participates, FEMA said. All major wireless providers participate in FEMA’s wireless alert system. Some older devices may not be compatible.
The Emergency Alert System test is scheduled to launch at the same time as the wireless portion, but will only last for one minute.
The upcoming test of the Emergency Alert System “will be similar to the regular, monthly EAS test messages with which the public is familiar,” said FEMA.
Since 2015, FEMA has been required under federal law to test the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System at least once every three years, and those tests can involve the Emergency Alert System, wireless alert system, and other alerts and warnings.
