Many British Columbians never received emergency test alert
Posted May 9, 2018 3:00 pm.
Last Updated May 9, 2018 4:28 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – It appears the glitches in the national Alert Ready system are still being ironed out.
While many smartphones in BC blared out a jarring tone or received an emergency text at 1:55 p.m. today as scheduled, many others did not.
Ian Lightbody, director of projects for Emergency Management BC, notes that the system only came into being on April 6th.
“The purpose of the test was to make sure things would work well, and obviously they haven’t,” he says.
“What we saw here in BC was consistent with what other provinces saw when they issued their alerts, in that there was no common thread between which phones, which carriers, or which software loads weren’t getting the alerts for whatever reason.”
Lightbody adds it is too early to speculate about what may have gone wrong. Emergency Management BC is planning to meet tomorrow with wireless carriers, representatives from other provinces, and system operator Pelmorex to discuss the results of the test.
An apparent problem in the coding prevented the alert from being sent to Quebec wireless devices Monday morning, while some – but not all – compatible devices in Ontario received it later in the afternoon.
The official launch of Alert Ready is scheduled for June.
It will be used to send targeted wireless emergency alerts to Canadians, warning of safety threats such as tsunamis or terrorist attacks, as well as to issue Amber Alerts.
