'This Is A Test' Some Hitches Noted During National Test

Did you hear it? FEMA Wednesday aired first nationwide test of the U.S. emergency alert system since the pandemic.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, tested both the Emergency Alert System (EAS), which broadcasts an emergency tone and message on televisions and radios, and the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), a newer system that sends emergency notifications to smartphones. This was the second nationwide test of the WEA after its debut in 2018, and the first test for all U.S. cell phones of users who chose to opt-in to receive test alerts.

The test began around 2:20 p.m. ET. If you opted-in to the test, you likely got a message on your phone that said: 

Since the last nationwide test in 2019, FEMA said it has improved WEA to send longer, detailed messages to the majority of phones that support it. The update also allows authorities to include tappable links, like web addresses, reports TechCrunch.

FEMA runs these tests every year or two to ensure the system is working properly. It’s no small task: A national emergency alert system designed to broadcast the same message to potentially hundreds of millions of people at any given time is fraught with technological hurdles that require close co-operation from the cell carriers and broadcast networks.

There also some reports of stations that did not receive the alert, including what was likely the entire Philadelphia market.  Philly public broadcaster WHYY 90.9 FM is the local Primary Entry Point (PEP) station and Chief Engineer Thad Kirk tells Inside Radio that while they received the test alert via NPR Squawk without a hitch, the DASDEC box did not forward the alert on. Kirk says a similar problem was experienced by New Jersey’s public broadcaster NJTV and it appears mobile alerts also did not get sent in the region. It is not yet know whether the problem was with the Monroe Electronics-built box or something in the FEMA message caused it not to forward.

The EAS system has been around since the late 1990s, but WEA was developed more recently as more Americans rely on their phones. WEA alerts, like EAS alerts, are designed to be sent by local and state authorities for public safety alerts, missing children and imminent threats, such as severe weather. More recently, FEMA rolled out “presidential alerts,” which are supposed to be sent to every phone in the U.S. in the event of a national emergency. Presidential alerts, unlike other alerts, can be issued by the sitting president for any reason, and Americans cannot opt out.

WEA broadcasts emergency notifications through the cell towers of an affected area — such as an area about to be hit by a storm — rather than sending tens of millions of text messages, which would grind the cell networks to a halt. The alerts are created by local, state or federal authorities and are authenticated by FEMA through the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or IPAWS, and then passed to cell carriers to deliver the emergency alert.