National Emergency Alert System test on Wednesday

The Georgia Association of Broadcasters has announced that they are performing the National Periodic Test for the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) on Wednesday August 11, 2021.

This means radios and televisions across the country may interrupt normal programming to play the EAS test message, which may be delivered in English or in Spanish.

The WEA test will be directed only to cell phones where the subscriber has opted-in to receive test messages, but according to FEMA’s release, most cell phones will not display the test message.

The tests are scheduled to begin at 2:20 p.m. ET. The backup date for this test is Wednesday, August 25th.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), these tests are performed so that federal and local government agencies can alert and warn the civilian population in areas endangered by natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other threats to public safety. The testing is to evaluate the effectiveness of the FEMA warning systems to distribute an emergency message nationwide as well as test the operational readiness of nationwide infrastructure.