Recognizing the sound your cell phone makes during an alert and springing to action can buy precious time during an emergency, when every second counts. You have probably seen Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) that warn of weather hazards like flash floods, hurricanes or tornadoes; fire hazards; and even AMBER Alerts about missing children. WEA are a great emergency preparedness tool for quickly delivering important, actionable information to the public all at once. At the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) public health emergency, many state, local, tribal, and territorial alerting authorities began to push WEA to cell phones with critical information for residents including mask wearing, shelter-in-place notices, social distancing, and testing facility locations. Through late September, more than 400 COVID-19-related WEA have been sent to the public. But what the public may not know is how the alerts are delivered and what a lifeline they are for emergency management agencies nationwide. The "how" is the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, also known as IPAWS, and it has saved potentially thousands of lives. IPAWS is FEMA's national system for local alerting that provides authenticated emergency and life-saving information to the public, including WEA to cell phones. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has been working with the FEMA IPAWS office and state and local response teams since early 2009 to develop effective alerts, warnings, and notifications programs, as well as identifying gaps in existing IPAWS alerting messaging. Last month, S&T and FEMA announced a new IPAWS Program Planning Toolkit containing frequently asked questions and a fact sheet, plus a train-the-trainer guide. | | | | |
U.S. Department of Homeland Security ·
www.dhs.gov · 202-282-8000
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