Emergency Alert System Goes Nationwide With Exercise

By: Andy Hodges
11/09/2011 02:00 PM ET

Emergency Alert System – An emergency exercise will be conducted today for a nationwide alert system. That high-pitched whine blaring out of your television and radio today may be enough to make your ears bleed, but it does not signify imminent zombie invasion.

As the man says, “This is only a test.”

What is different about today’s annoying beep is that for the first time, a test of the nation’s Emergency Alert System is occurring simultaneously across the country.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Communications Commission will conduct the test today, briefly interrupting “Judge Judy,” sports radio and all else, at noon Mountain time.

“It will be a lot like what we see every month,” said Micki Trost of Colorado’s Division of Emergency Management.

All broadcast stations and cable systems are regularly required to participate in the nationwide Emergency Alert System, which means each station has to run a test once a month, Trost said.

What will be different this time is that because the test is being conducted nationally, it’s not clear whether the reassuring words “this is only a test” will crawl across television screens as they do when the test is enacted locally.

That has officials on edge, worried that those who are hearing or cognitively impaired or don’t understand English might panic.

“We want to get the word out because we’re trying to avoid having the 911 dispatchers inundated with calls wondering what the emergencies are,” Trost said.

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Source: Emergency Alert System