[LINK] Canberra Emergency Warnings About Factory Fire

[Scott Howard]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Ash Nallawalla <ash at melbpc.org.au> wrote:

> This November I will be in the US during
> a planned test of the EAS, which replaced the EBS:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Alert_System. I have a US mobile,
> so
> I expect it will get the message.
>

EAS does NOT use mobiles phones at all.  It's is a Radio/TV only system.

EAS tests occur weekly - normally relatively late at night (around/after
midnight), and consist of a very short recorded announcement that it is just
a test.  The test in November is different only in that it's a national test
rather than local to each individual provider.

In the San Francisco Bay Area the only EAS alerts I've ever seen are "Amber
Alerts" (ie, missing/abducted children), although apparently there was at
least one Tsunami alert broadcast after the Japanese earthquake. In other
areas of the US they seem to be used far more frequently as an alerting
mechanism for particularly bad weather (something we don't have too much of
in the Bay area!)

  Scott.