Pennsylvania emergency alerts: What was it, what you need to know about the 911 outage

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — As state officials spread the word about Friday’s intermittent 911 outage, many heard alerts via their phone or terrestrial broadcasting.

What we heard was a two-part system — EMnet and the Emergency Alert System — activated, in this case, by the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

PEMA said the system is satellite-based and has hundreds of terminals across the Commonwealth.

“Emergency Management Network stations, the National Weather Service, and other government organizations access the system to send text messages to each other and broadcast media, and text and audio messages for rebroadcast to the public,” PEMA’s website reads.

EMnet became the primary emergency alert network for Pennsylvania in 2003 and allows direct-to-broadcast transmission and transmission of messages in languages other than English for such broadcasters.

In Friday’s case, alerts were sent to mobile devices and heard on terrestrial broadcasting stations, like radio and television.