Due to the ongoing response efforts to Hurricane Florence, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has postponed the nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) previously scheduled for Thursday, November 20, 2018. The test will now be conducted on Wednesday, October 3, 2018.
The WEA portion of the test commences at 2:18 p.m. Eastern and the EAS portion follows at 2:20 p.m. Eastern. The test, as recently explained by the two organizations, will assess the operational readiness of the infrastructure for distribution of a national message and determine whether technological improvements are needed. This is the fourth EAS nationwide test and the first national WEA test.
For more information about the nationwide test, visit https://www.fema.gov/emergency-alert-test.
