FEMA Will Do IPAWS CAP Test March 18

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System will send a common alerting protocol message containing the national periodic test event code along with geocodes for four participating states March 18 at 2:30 p.m. EDT, said Al Kenyon, FEMA’s IPAWS national test technical lead. He spoke on an IPAWS north central regional emergency alert system (EAS) participant webinar Thursday. The test will be done for about 2,000 EAS participants in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, he said. “This is above and beyond the day-to-day requirements of EAS,” Kenyon said. “We’re doing what we can to make it better.” Representatives from Digital Alert Systems, Monroe Electronics, Sage Alerting Systems and Trilithic Emergency Alert Systems discussed how to configure their devices for the upcoming test. In a Sept. 17 IPAWS test, about 90 percent of the participating stations successfully transmitted the test message, Kenyon said. “A 90 percent success rate where you don’t have the opportunity to pretest the test is very good.”