Americans: be prepared for your cell phone to scream Wednesday at about 2:20pm EDT

[thewayne]

FEMA is going to be broadcasting an emergency alert test to every cell phone in the USA. I have no idea if this will bleed over to Canada or Mexico, hopefully it won't. I expect it to be kind of annoying, I should put an alert on my phone to go silent for 10-15 minutes around that time tomorrow.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/emergency-alert-test-october-4-2023-fema-fcc-cellphones-tvs-radios/

Comments

[silveradept]

On time and on target. Two messages, one in English, one in Spanish.

[acelightning73]

I didn't get the Spanish version. Although I speak and read Spanish perfectly well. Probably because my phone defaults to English as its primary language.

[silveradept]

Mine, too, but I live in a region where there are enough primary or monolingual Spanish speakers that the message makes sense to have been sent twice.

[acelightning73]

I can see the skyline of Manhattan (which is clearly bilingual) from my upstairs window. So how come I didn't get the Spanish message?

[silveradept]

I have no answer for that. It certainly sounds like you should have gotten one.