Julie Clover
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are testing US emergency notification systems on Wednesday, October 4th. Emergency text messages will be sent to mobile phones. throughout the US.
Wireless Emergency Alert Test will begin at 2:20 pm PT . ET/11:20 a.m. PT today, and iPhone owners can expect to receive a text message in English or Spanish, depending on their device's language settings. In addition to smartphones, test messages will also be sent to TVs and radios.
Test messages sent to smartphones will indicate that the alert is a test alert with the following text: “ THIS IS A TEST National Wireless Emergency Alert System . The goal is to maintain and improve alerting and warning capabilities at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels and to assess the nation's public alerting and warning capabilities. No public action is required.” The first time a notification is received, an “alert tone” will be played.
The United States uses wireless emergency alerts to allow federal, state, and local agencies to send short emergency messages from cell towers to a targeted area. They are intended to warn of an impending natural or man-made disaster, although the system is also used for child abductions and public safety alerts.
AMBER alerts, emergency alerts, public safety alerts, and test alerts can all be turned on or disable on iPhone by going to the Notifications section of the Settings app and scrolling to Government Alerts. Disabling switches usually prevents warnings, but it's worth noting that in today's test there is no way to disable them.
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