DENVER — When a test emergency alert gets sent, but is not received, is the test a success?
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on Wednesday tested the Emergency Alert System (EAS), to send emergency alerts on television and radio, and also tested the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system, which sends text messages to cell phones.
Did you get a text?
"You don’t want 100% success rate on an exercise because otherwise, you don’t find the gaps that you need to fill," said James F. Taylor, a FEMA law enforcement and public safety liaison in Colorado.
You are not alone if you did not get the message. Employees of FEMA, which conducted the test, did not receive the alert.
"We just went through new phone integration. We switched over to a new platform and it has reset all of our warnings, so from what I’m gathering from that staff that work with me, none of us received the text message either, which is actually a success because that means we need to go in and do that little bit of work to accept test messages so, in the future, it will come through."
According to FEMA, cell phones default to "opt-out" for test emergency messages.
To opt-in, Android users can activate "state and local alerts" in their wireless emergency alert settings. iPhone users have to do something they would never have known to do. They need to open their keypad, as though they are making a call, and dial *5005*25371#
"If you’ve opted in, that’s great, you’re getting a test. But some people don’t want to hear the test, and if they don’t want to hear the test, we don’t want to create enemies. We don’t want to create people who are angry that we tested, so we’re allowing them to opt-out," said Taylor.
What is the point of a test WEA emergency alert, if most cell phones are set to not receive the test?
"There’s more to the test than just pressing a button to send a message to people. There’s a lot more to it. You have to run through the process of generating the message. What is the emergency that we’re talking about? How do we word that message so the people understand it? How do we word that message so they’ll actually take action? There are a lot of parts to the test other than just press a button and make a phone vibrate or buzz or make a noise," said Taylor.
Taylor said he would check with FEMA in Washington, D.C., to see if there is data that shows how many messages were sent, and how many would have been received if not for opting-out.
"If this was not a test, you don’t have to opt-in for the real thing. So, if there really was an emergency, we would get it anyway without opting in for the test," said Taylor.
Arapahoe County still investigating last week's WEA alert regarding Englewood water
The opposite happened in Arapahoe county last week. A WEA alert meant for a specific area was received way beyond that area.
Arapahoe County's Office of Emergency Management sent an alert last week for certain Englewood residents to boil their water because of E. coli. That boil order is no longer necessary. The alert was received by residents across the metro area.
"The cell phone towers are supposed to receive that message, the carriers process it, and then send it to their subscribers. We understand that there is bleed over that's going to happen within a tenth of a mile. This bled significantly farther than we anticipated," said Arapahoe County Emergency Management Director Nathan Fogg. "Highlands Ranch, we heard as far as Stapleton Northfield, Lakewood, parts of Denver and Aurora."
He said everything on the county's side, through the software, was done correctly, including drawing a specific area for cell phones to be alerted.
"We're now working with the IPAWS (Integrated Public Alert & Warning System) lab and FEMA in Washington, D.C. to try and backtrack the system and figure out why it bled over so much," said Fogg.
Fogg said it will be a few weeks before the county knows what happened.
"I would rather over-alert or over-notify people, it wasn't our intent. What we don't want [is] people opting out and turning off their alerts," said Fogg. "We want those folks to leave those notifications on, understanding that it is an imperfect system and there may be bleed over."
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