ATLANTA — Your phone may have buzzed and sounded the alarm this morning about a radiological emergency in Georgia.
Our phones in the Channel 2 Action News newsroom buzzed about the alert, too.
The alert popped up on the phone as "EAS Radiological Hazard Warning THIS IS A TEST."
As soon as the alert was sent, around 8 a.m., our phones were ringing off the hook with viewers asking what had happened. We also received questions about it on social media.
“I thought there was radiation exposure that was going on in this county, and like I said, it scared me enough that I woke my wife up and said, ‘I didn’t know what’s going on but there was just alert and it didn’t say anything about a test,’” said Gwinnett County resident Orrin Smalls.
The Georgia Department of Emergency Management tweeted that the alert was indeed a test of its system and that there is no radiological emergency.
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The department tweeted the following statement:
You may have received a **TEST** emergency alert this morning regarding a radiological emergency in Georgia. We regularly test our emergency alert systems to ensure they are working properly and this was a ONLY A TEST MESSAGE. There is no radiological emergency. pic.twitter.com/W8u4yZglow
— Georgia EM&HS (@GeorgiaEMA) June 20, 2019
In another statement, the department said:
“We conduct regular testing of our emergency alert systems in order to ensure we are capable of reaching the public in the event of an actual emergency. We have since issued a cancellation message to ensure that the public is clear that this was a test message only.”
Cox Media Group
