NORFOLK, VA – Norfolk’s Department of Emergency Preparedness and Response will begin monthly testing of their Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system, with tests set to take place in one designated WEA Testing Zone per month throughout the year.
The tests are designed to get residents accustomed to the system the City will use to notify them in the event of an emergency.
The alert will be live for one hour after being sent out. During the test time, everyone within the designated testing zone who has their phone set up to receive test alerts will get the WEA test message via text. Recipients of the alert do not need to take any action. After that time, the message ends and is no longer broadcasted.
The test schedule is as follows:
Month | Zip Code |
January | Zone 1 |
February | Zone 2 |
March | Zone 3 |
April | Zone 4 |
May | Zone 5 |
June | Zone 6 |
July | Zone 7 |
August | Zone 8 |
September | Zone 9 |
October | Zone 10 |
November | Zone 11 |
December | Zone 12 |
Residents can look up their WEA Testing Zone and check their phone settings to ensure they can receive alerts online.
The City conducted a similar test in the Berkley/Campostella area of Norfolk last September as a part of the national WEA performance tests held by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), successfully reaching 381 volunteers and community members with text alerts.
The City of Norfolk is an Alerting Authority under the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) Program Management Office (PMO). This gives the City the designated authority to alert and warn the public when there is an impending natural or human-made disaster, threat, or dangerous or missing person. There are more than 1,600 federal, state, local, tribal and territorial Alerting Authorities using IPAWS to issue critical public alerts and warnings in their jurisdictions.