WASHINGTON—The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the FCC have postponed the nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system until Oct. 3 because of current efforts to respond to Hurricane Florence.
The WEA test is now scheduled to begin at 2:18 p.m. EDT, and the EAS test to begin at 2:20 p.m. EDT.
Originally, the nationwide test, which assesses the readiness of the infrastructure to distribute a nationwide message and to find areas needing improvement, was scheduled for Sept. 20.
The nationwide test will be the fourth for EAS and the first for WEA. Broadcast EAS participants, including radio, TV, cable TV, satellite TV and radio and wireline video providers, will receive and rebroadcast the test message, which lasts about one minute, FEMA said.
Cell towers will transmit the WEA test for about 30 minutes. WEA-compatible cell phones in range of a tower of a WEA participating provider will switch on and receive the WEA test message, FEMA said.
More information is available on the FEMA website.
