Don’t panic if your phone starts buzzing with an emergency alert on Wednesday. It’s part of a nationwide test from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
FEMA said it plans to conduct a national test of its Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) beginning at 2:20 p.m. ET.
The Emergency Alert System test will ring out on TVs and radios and may be delivered in English or Spanish, according to FEMA.
Only consumer mobile phones that have opted-in to receive test messages will get the Wireless Emergency Alert portion of the test. The alert will be in either English or Spanish, depending on the device’s language settings. This will be the second nationwide WEA test, with the first taking place in 2018, but the first on a consumer opt-in basis, FEMA reported.
The message will read, “Emergency Alert. This is a test of the National Wireless Emergency System. No action is needed,” according to a post on FEMA’s Facebook page.
The Emergency Alert System was created to provide the president with the capability to address the public within 10 minutes during a national emergency, FEMA said on its website.
Wireless Emergency Alerts allow authorized federal, state, local, tribal and territorial public authorities to send short emergency messages, according to FEMA’s website.
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