Clarke County Emergency Management Director talks about the Emergency Alert System test

In Awareness of the 14th National preparedness month, a new Emergency Alert System (EAS) has developed and has the capability of delivering messages nationally in a rapid amount of time.

In the event of a catastrophic emergency like Hurricane Florence, it is important to get messages out as soon as possible according to Eddie Ivy Clarke County Emergency Management Director.

“The new system that has come out is designed to be able to use nationwide for something that could be an attack on our country, for example, the president can get involved and issue that warning to everyone at the same time, and it would go through not only your cellphones but also the television radio.”

Ivy also says officials don’t have the accurate response time on this new system delivering messages, but they are going to keep a close eye on how fast cellphones receive the signal when the test initiates next month.

“One reason they’re doing the test s to find out how long it actually takes to get that message out nationwide to determine how long from the time the trigger is pulled till the message is delivered how long that is going to take. The benefit here is getting the same message to everybody in a timely manner so that everybody gets the same information.”

Ivy adds that he is expecting this new EAS system to be successful and even better than the previous emergency alert systems used over the years."

“Hopefully with any type of emergency, whether it’s weather or a terrorist attack or earthquake or whatever hopefully this system will allow the message to be out in a timely manner so that people can activate their emergency action plan that they’ve developed.”