Emergency Alert Test Schedule for Wednesday, March 18

DEM Blogger

March 17, 2015

Kentucky Emergency Management and the Kentucky Broadcaster’s Association will be supporting a State/Regional test, to assess the operational readiness and effectiveness of the IPAWS infrastructure for distribution of a national-level message. The test will be from origination of message to reception of the message by the public. This will help to implement a standard methodology for regularly testing the alert and warning infrastructure.

The test will be conducted tomorrow, Wednesday, March 18 at 2:30 PM, EDT with the voluntary cooperation of Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky radio and TV stations and cable operators.

An EAS message will be sent to the stations using a national periodic test (NPT) message code which appears on TV, and sounds on the radio, and is nearly identical to the regularly conducted monthly tests of Emergency Alert System (EAS), heard by public listeners and viewers.

Here’s how the test will work:

• FEMA IPAWS originates the test message through the IPAWS EAS Feed.
• The EAS message is a National Periodic Test (NPT) message, with an audio message similar to the regular monthly test announcements that the public is used to hearing.
• The only difference is the word “National” is added to the test message.
• The following content will be heard from radio and TV and shown via text crawl on TV:

“This is a National test of the Emergency Alert System. This is only a test. Broadcast and cable operators in your area have developed this system in voluntary cooperation with FEMA, the FCC and local authorities to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency an official message would have followed the alert tone. This concludes this National test of the Emergency Alert System.”

All media inquiries should be directed to the FEMA News Desk @ (202)-646-3272.

Note: Lexington’s warning siren system will NOT be triggered for this test. This test is for radio, television and cable systems ONLY.