Oct 4 National Emergency Alert Test

MichaelB

MichaelB

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From the FEMA website, there will be test alerts this afternoon https://www.fema.gov/press-release/...emergency-alert-test-oct-4-test-messages-will
FEMA, in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) tomorrow, Oct. 4.

The national test will consist of two portions, testing WEA and EAS capabilities. Both tests are scheduled to begin at approximately 2:20 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Oct. 4.

The WEA portion of the test will be directed to consumer cell phones. This will be the third nationwide test, but the second test to all WEA-compatible cellular devices. The test message will display in either English or in Spanish, depending on the language settings of the wireless handset.

The EAS portion of the test will be sent to radios and televisions. This will be the seventh nationwide EAS test.
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Interesting... They also test the Emergency Weather Alert system radios on Wednesday's... (Every Wednesday) Half the time it wakes me up from my afternoon nap.:) Dang thing is loud.
 
It will be interesting to see if the streaming services (ie Spotify)are effected or not. I suspect not, but I may be surprised. T-13 minutes and counting...
 
Its too bad the baseball playoff game is later in the day. It would've been wild to see thousands of phones suddenly blare the alarm sound right while the pitcher is winding up, lol.
 
I will power off everything. The doggo hates these. Per the vet she has a very weak heart and we are to keep her physical and emotional stress at a minimum. We try . . .

(She just had some homemade organic chicken broth, did the face rub of victory on the rug, laid down for a post broth snooze - and shall not be disturbed.)
 
gromit said:
Its too bad the baseball playoff game is later in the day. It would've been wild to see thousands of phones suddenly blare the alarm sound right while the pitcher is winding up, lol.
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It will be interesting to see if there are any reports of moderate mayhem from places where folks are gathered when this happens - stores, malls, etc. If I was not in the middle of a painting project, I'd be tempted to go to the local Costco (usually busy at that time) to observe what happens :).
 
Just got mine
 
It's apparently inescapable. I had Emergency Alerts turned off on my phone just to see, but it made no difference -- the test came through anyway.
 
Just got mine (via text msg) on my cell phone and an alert on DirecTV too. No weather radio alert, so far,
 
Did not hear a thing :) I keep cellphoens off unless am making a call. What's a TV?
 
My cell phone starting beeping at 2:18, 8 minutes ago. I am in a studio apartment, so I can't easily escape the noise (I'll have to turn the cell phone off for a while). The TV started a few minutes later but hasn't been noisy.
 
Got the first message in Spanish about 1:20:30 CDT. I do not speak Spanish. Next one in English after a minute or so. Another in Spanish about 1:18. We'll see how long this goes on.

Pressing "OK" seems to make the messages go away forever. Apparently no way to retrieve and review.
 
gauss said:
It will be interesting to see if the streaming services (ie Spotify)are effected or not. I suspect not, but I may be surprised. T-13 minutes and counting...
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They broke into the downloaded podcast I was listening to. Surprised with it interrupting everything. It also was heard from my ear buds & the phone speaker at the same time.
 
I got mine, too. I am glad it was not the real thing because all you would see is the shadow of my carbon footprint etched on the cement driveway...
 
I was pretty successful. (Cell was turned completely off and stuffed under some pillows and blankets with laptop and handheld landline, and the bedroom door closed.) The base of the landline was unplugged as were tvs and weather monitoring devices.
 
Mine was 2 minutes early. :facepalm: You'd think they could do better than that.

When I was a kid (in the 1950's) the Cold War was a big deal and nobody wondered why we had warnings like this.

But now, in 2023, it almost seems a bit over-the-top for some reason. I guess that's a good thing, maybe world tensions have ramped down a bit in the past 70 years.
 
OldShooter said:
Got the first message in Spanish about 1:20:30 CDT. I do not speak Spanish. Next one in English after a minute or so. Another in Spanish about 1:18. We'll see how long this goes on.

Pressing "OK" seems to make the messages go away forever. Apparently no way to retrieve and review.
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This happened to Frank, too. He was perplexed since he normally speaks only English (although he took Spanish in high school). I didn't see any Spanish, but then I shut my warning down as soon as I read it.
 
I was on a plane on approach at 10K feet. A few phones went off - don’t know if it was because they were connected to Wi-Fi or were not on airplane mode. The DirectTV on the seat backs showed the message but the flight map was not interrupted.

Then when we landed a few more went off. I left phone off for a few minutes. No message when I turned it on.
 
W2R said:
Mine was 2 minutes early. :facepalm: You'd think they could do better than that.

When I was a kid (in the 1950's) the Cold War was a big deal and nobody wondered why we had warnings like this.

But now, in 2023, it almost seems a bit over-the-top for some reason. I guess that's a good thing, maybe world tensions have ramped down a bit in the past 70 years.
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Remember duck and cover? .



th


Duck+and+Cover+3.jpg
 
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Car-Guy said:
Remember duck and cover?
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I do. But they said it was in case of "an air raid". I thought they were saying "ear ache" and thought they were insane thinking that would fix it.

But the paranoid cynic in me wonders why every phone in the country had to go off...if one's phone didn't go off, who do you complain to? Is there something are we preparing for? AFAIK, we've never done this before on this scale.
 
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Car-Guy said:
Remember duck and cover? .
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Oh boy, do I ever!!! Any one of those kids cowering under their desks could probably have been me. And then, we were also taught to evacuate from the upper floor of our school, in an orderly fashion by using the fire escape.

It's amazing that kids brought up in that era didn't turn out to be raving paranoids.

(Honestly, I didn't jump when my phone rang with the EBS warning today! I had it on my calendar so I wouldn't totally freak. :2funny: )
 
Yeah, fortunately DH had already warned me. I received it this afternoon loud and clear!
 
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