what is emergency alert on phone

A Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) is a short emergency message sent directly to your phone by authorized government alerting authorities. The alert is accompanied by a unique attention signal and vibration to make sure that the alerts are noticed. The WEA system is an essential part of Americas emergency preparedness and has been used more than 84,000 times to warn the public about dangerous weather, missing children, and other critical situations. There are four types of alerts that can be sent through the WEA system: National Alerts, Imminent Threat Alerts, AMBER Alerts, and Public Safety Messages. Only Presidential Alerts, AMBER Alerts, and Imminent Threat Alerts will trigger a WEA. When an alert is issued by the appropriate authorities, cell towers in the affected areas will pick up this alert and transfer it to all phones connected to that cell tower. The WEA system does not track your location, so if your phone is connected to the affected cell tower, you may receive the emergency alert even though you are not in the affected area. The goal of the WEA system is to provide immediate, life-saving information to the public during an emergency.