There will be a national test of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System or IPAWS Wednesday morning. The emergency alert will be sent to nearly all cell phones in the U.S. at 10: 18 a.m. Alaska Daylight Time. Cell phones on certain wireless carriers will receive a text notifying them of the test. Phones will also make a loud alert tone.
Two minutes later, radio stations and TV stations will broadcast an Emergency Alert System test message.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Communications Commission originally scheduled the test for last month but pushed it back in order to avoid confusion with Hurricane Florence response efforts.
This comes about 10 months after the IPAWS system experienced issues during a tsunami warning in the Gulf of Alaska. However, other features in the wireless emergency alert system did get the message out to Alaskans affected by the warning.
The Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management is asking residents to participate in a survey on the effectiveness of the Wednesday’s test. To access the survey, residents can go to ready.alaska.gov.
