National alert system to be re-tested today following issues in early 2018

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The problems with the national alert system weren’t just limited to eastern Canada.

The Alert Ready system is being tested for a second time as part of a Canada-wide program to “improve public safety in the event of an emergency,” the Government of B.C. says.

Here’s a sound you should be hearing this afternoon:

Jennifer Rice with the B.C. Ministry of Public Safety admits not everyone got the alert earlier this year.

“We’ve done a lot of trouble shooting on what went wrong, and the vast majority of people who didn’t receive their notification, the reason for that is that they didn’t have their phones updated to the latest operating system.”

Read more: Canada-wide emergency alert test scheduled for Wednesday

Rice adds “the same can be said for a lot of the older phones. It needs to be a phone that is compatible with the LTE or the 4G network.”

She says this test is an opportunity to not only make sure the system is working correctly, but also to allow people to ensure their devices are compatible and raise awareness around emergency preparedness, generally.

“Last spring, we added wireless alerting to the current television and radio alerting system to just broaden our reach, making sure that more people have access to critical and possible life-saving information in the event of an emergency.”

Read more: Emergency alert test sounds off on mobile phones nationwide

For now in B.C., people will only get an alert if there’s a possible tsunami.

“We don’t have the compatibility yet for all types of emergencies, but we’re working in that direction.”

You should hear the alert go off at 1:55 p.m., on your phone, TV, or radio, and apparently social media.

-With files from Marcus Fitzgerald

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