FEMA sends presidential test alerts on mobile phones for users in the USA

FEMA sends presidential test alerts on mobile phones for users in the USA

Today the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sent presidential alerts on the Americans mobile phones, nationwide alerts which indeed, alerted people in the USA.

Today was the debut for the presidential alert tests which resulted in sending alerts nationwide to make sure the system works. The presidential alerts are enabled by default on most phones but to make sure the presidential alert option is enabled, we can check one of the 2 paths, depending on the model we have:

Settings – More – Emergency broadcasts
Messaging – Settings – Cell broadcast alerts

Furthermore, as far as I know, the presidential alerts can’t be disabled on most phones.

The presidential test alerts were made at 11:18 a.m. PT/2:18 p.m. ET Wednesday. So, in case you didn’t have your mobile phone turned off or on airplane mode, you should have received the alert which contained this text: “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed”.

Wireless Emergency Alerts, previously known as the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS – this is what you will se in the settings of most of our phones) is a way of alerting users through location based alerts in case of emergencies, national threats or disasters.

FEMA sends presidential test alerts on mobile phones for users in the USA

If you were lucky enough to receive the same alert again and again for several periods of times, make sure you don’t have reminders enabled for your emergency alerts.
This is the first time the emergency alerting system is tested nationwide and it might cause some panic among the persons which did not read the text of the alert, but it is safe to say there is no emergency (yet) and everything was just a test.

The WEA alerts consist of a loud ringtone and vibration both emerging twice. If you got it more than twice, as I said, you probably have reminders enabled for the alerts.
If you want any other information regarding the WEAs, the tests made today or if you are having problems receiving this kind of alerts, leave a comment but make sure you mention the model of your phone.

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