Denton County emergency management outlines statewide IPAWS test, warns residents to expect multiple alerts

Denton County emergency management officials told the Commissioners Court on March 31 that the Texas Division of Emergency Management is directing a statewide emergency-alert test using the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), and that the county will run a public test of the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) broadcast.

Mark Bolan, who the judge introduced from the county’s Emergency Management Department, said the test will exercise two IPAWS subsystems: the broadcast Wireless Emergency Alert that goes to cell phones and the broader integrated public alert architecture. "There is basically, it's gonna say this is an emergency alert. There is basically, it's gonna say this is only a test," he told the court.

Bolan told the court that jurisdictions across Texas will be testing in a narrow window — likely between 10:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. — and that residents could receive multiple alerts from neighboring jurisdictions (for example, a city and the county) during that interval. "You might get multiple alerts. You might get one from Denton County. You might get one from the City of Denton," he said, adding that the system can conceivably reach the county’s roughly one million residents who have public-alert settings turned on.

County leaders said they have coordinated outreach. Bolan said the county has conducted extensive social-media outreach and that the county communications team has issued a press release to reduce public alarm. The judge said the county wants the public to understand this is a test, not a real emergency.

Bolan also warned of weather contingencies: if storms or inclement weather are occurring during the scheduled test window, Denton County will restrict the exercise to an internal test that goes only to emergency-management partners in order to avoid confusing real-world alerts with the test. "If there is inclement weather, we are going to do just strictly an internal test that will only go out to emergency management," he said.

The court did not take formal action on the briefing; commissioners asked how the public can ensure they receive alerts and Bolan said that WEA alerts are controlled through phone settings rather than a sign-up, though the county also encourages residents to enroll in local subscriber alert systems for additional messages.

Next steps: county staff said additional outreach will be posted ahead of the Thursday test and county social media and partner agencies will remind residents of the purpose and timing of the exercise.