Emergency alert test goes Wednesday
The Alberta Emergency Management Agency will be conducting a province-wide test of its new Alberta Emergency Alert system at 1:55 p.m. on Wednesday, May 9. According to Luke Palmer, Lethbridge’s emergency preparedness manager, the City is working in conjunction with AEMA to ensure the local test goes smoothly.
“This is a service people cannot opt out of,” Palmer explained at a press conference held at the No. 1 Fire Station early Monday afternoon.
“If you have an LTE device on most of the networks in Canada, you are going to be getting these alerts whether you’re signed up or not.”
The alert will come in the form of a text message, but will be clear on its emergency nature, he said.
“The misconception with this alerting system is that people are anticipating it as a text message,” Palmer explained, “and while it may look like a text message it is still an alert.
“It will have a banner indicating who it is from, and then the message contents below ... The messaging in this alert is going to be as clear and concise as possible. It’s going to let you know what’s happening, and for further information you need to go to the Alberta Emergency Alert app.”
Palmer said the City is excited about the possibilities of the alert system. If all goes according to plan, the City should be able to broadcast these wireless alerts as broadly or as narrowly as needed when major disasters strike, or when specific neighbourhoods within the City are facing a specific threat or hazard.
“The big change with this program is we can actually put it geographically (straight) to impacted areas; so we can select it to as small as a block,” he said. “We can send messages to anybody’s wireless devices that are turned on, and connect it to a cell network.”
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