A national alert system will be tested on Monday – here is all the information you need to know.
At 2pm on Monday, July 27 a test critical alert, called AusAlert, will be sent to all compatible mobile phones across Australia, this includes most phones, some smart watches and tablets.
Devices receiving the alert will vibrate and a emit a siren warning sound for about 10 seconds. An AusAlert message will appear on device screens saying it is a test.
AusAlert was created in response to the 2020 Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements which found that mobile emergency warning systems are effective at keeping communities informed during disasters.
“Each event since the Black Summer bush fires of 2019, and there have been over 200 of them, have reminded us of the importance of the fact that communities that understand the risk that they face are safer and recover more quickly,” National Emergency Management Agency Coordinator-General Brendan Moon said.
“AusAlert will deliver on that urgent, vital need of our community for information surrounding those threats and those hazards that they will face.
“It provides a real time emergency warning at scale, and also, we can geolocate it down to quite small areas as well. It will alert people to the type of hazard that they are facing, its severity, whereabouts and importantly, what action to take, and this continues to deliver on our entire Australian warning system.”
The alert will sound even if the device is on silent or do not disturb so those who wish for their device to not receive the test are advised to turn their phone off between 1pm on Monday, July 27 and 2pm on Tuesday, July 28 or place their device on aeroplane mode.
Removing the devices sim may not prevent the alert.
The alert is a test but in the event of a real emergency the alert will display information about the type of emergency, where the emergency is, the severity, what to do, the name of the emergency organisation that sent the alert, and where to find information.
