The Berrien County Sheriff’s Department Emergency Management Division and the Van Buren County Office of Domestic Preparedness are marking the successful test of the region’s public alert system on Wednesday.
You may have received an emergency alert on your phone around 10:50 a.m. Berrien County Emergency Management Coordinator Rockey Adams tells us that was the test. They wanted to find out how well the mass messaging system works.
“Everything went out over the wireless emergency alert system, emergency alert system, and the phone auto dialer systems that we had, as well as the NOA weather radios,” Adams said. ” We’re getting survey responses back right now. We’ve gotten a little over 3,000 in the past hour, so we’re really appreciative of the public.”
Adams says everyone can still fill out those online surveys to help emergency management staff better understand the strengths and the weaknesses of the system that issues emergency alerts.
“The general questions are related to whether they got it, about where they were, and then it goes into asking each of those individual systems if they received it multiple ways.”
You can find that survey right here.
Van Buren County Sheriff Dan Abbott says the test was a success, noting the alert system can be used to notify people of severe weather, hazardous material incidents, natural disasters, or any other dangerous situation. Now that the test is complete, Adams says emergency management officials will be reviewing the data for several months.
Wednesday’s test was conducted in Berrien, Van Buren, and Allegan counties.
