Colorado Springs: Emergency alert testing to occur during upcoming evacuation exercise

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~ Colorado Springs - Local public safety officials in the Broadmoor Bluffs area of Colorado Springs will be conducting an evacuation exercise on Saturday, Sept. 28 at 11 a.m. As part of this exercise, two test emergency alerts will be issued by both Peak Alerts and the Wireless Emergency Alert system.

The first alert, a Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA), will be a short message from authorized public alerting authorities at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels. This message will be broadcasted from cell towers to any WEA-enabled mobile device within a specific local area. Depending on the age and carrier of the mobile device, recipients may receive one of two messages: a 90-character alert stating "TEST ALERT: This is a test of the wireless emergency alert system. No action required," or a 360-character alert from the Colorado Springs Police Department stating "TEST ALERT. First Responders are conducting an EXERCISE in the area of Highway 115 and Star Ranch Rd. Watch for emergency vehicles. This alert is testing public alerting capabilities. NO ACTION REQUIRED."

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The second test alert will come from Peak Alerts and will read "TEST, TEST, TEST. This is a test of Peak Alerts for the Broadmoor Bluffs Evacuation Exercise. This is only a TEST." Participants in the exercise are instructed to proceed to Harrison High School located at 2755 Janitell Rd for a Safety Fair while those not participating can disregard the message.

Peak Alerts notifications can be identified by their caller ID (719) 309-4135 for phone calls, 88911 for text messages, and noreply@everbridge.net for emails. Residents are encouraged to store this information on their mobile devices as it will be used to send important emergency messages from Peak Alerts.

Residents can sign up for Peak Alerts at peakalerts.org to receive warnings about life-threatening emergencies such as evacuations, natural disasters, missing persons, hazardous materials incidents, and public-impacting law enforcement activity. These alerts can be customized to notify residents at their registered address(es) or current location (if using the Everbridge app). Users can register multiple locations such as their home address, child's school, and work location. To sign up for these alerts, residents must create an account with their address and at least one contact method. Peak Alerts ensures the protection of personal information and will not use it for any other purpose. Residents can choose how they want to receive these messages, whether it be through text, phone call, email, mobile app, fax, and more.

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One advantage of Peak Alerts is that it notifies users regardless of the location of their physical phone. This means that registered users will receive alerts whether they are at home, work or away from their registered locations. However, WEAs are only sent to phones within a defined area.

This evacuation exercise and the test emergency alerts aim to ensure that public alerting systems are functioning properly in case of a real emergency. Residents are encouraged to participate in this exercise and sign up for Peak Alerts to stay informed about potential life-threatening situations in their area.

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