A test of Alert Ready, Canada’s National Public Alerting System, will take place this Wednesday, May 7, at 12:55 p.m. throughout Ontario.
Municipal officials say this is a scheduled simulation of an emergency alert and will be distributed on TV, radio and wireless devices.
In the event of an actual emergency, the alert will not mention a test.
Testing of the Alert Ready system provides the opportunity to:
– Increase public awareness about the system and spark emergency preparedness conversations, so that Canadians can be prepared in the event of an emergency.
– Validate the effectiveness and reliability of the system to ensure it operates as intended from end-to-end.
– Provides an opportunity for Emergency Management officials to practice sending alerts to the public.
“Alert Ready is Canada’s Emergency Alerting System,” Municipal officials say.
“Alert Ready delivers critical and potentially life-saving alerts to Canadians including, but not limited to, tornadoes, flooding, fires and amber alerts through television, radio, and LTE-compatible wireless devices. To check your phone’s compatibility, or to view the testing schedule, visit alertready.ca.”
Municipal officials added: “Chatham-Kent residents that are interested in receiving emergency notifications that are local to the Municipality of Chatham-Kent can register for CKAlert at www.ckalert.ca. CKAlert is the Municipality of Chatham-Kent’s new emergency notification service, which can send emergency notifications directly to residents via text, email or phone call.”
Unlike Alert Ready, residents must sign up for CKAlert before receiving notifications, Municipal officials added.
