•
Boston Marathon bombing – A
shelter-in-place warning was issued via CMAS by the
Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. • A child abduction alert in the New York City region in July 2013 for a 7-month-old boy who had been abducted. The massive inconvenience caused by the 4:00 am timing raised concerns that many cellphone users would choose to disable alerts. • A blizzard warning in February 2013 for New York City. (Note: As of November 2013, blizzard warnings are no longer included in the CMAS program.) • A shelter-in-place warning for New York City in October 2012 due to
Hurricane Sandy. • A child abduction alert in the New York City Region on June 30, 2015, for a three-year-old girl who had been abducted. •
2016 New York and New Jersey bombings – A wanted alert was issued in New York City with a suspect's name two days after the bombings. • On October 24, 2018, an alert was sent to those in the area of the
Time Warner Center to shelter in place while the
NYPD investigated a
suspicious package sent to
CNN. • An amber alert issued in Utah in late-September 2019 was mocked on social media for its accompanying WEA message, which only contained the unclear shorthand "gry Toyt" (an abbreviation of "gray
Toyota", referring to the suspect's vehicle). • WEA was used extensively during the
COVID-19 pandemic to provide notice of health guidance and
stay-at-home orders. Utah attempted to use localized alerts to inform drivers entering the state that they must fill out a mandatory, online travel declaration. However, this was dropped and replaced with road signs after the state reported that the alert was being received by residents up to 80 miles away of the intended area, and that "some of them received the alert more than 15 times."
National periodic tests Although national tests of the related Emergency Alert System have been conducted nearly annually since 2011, the first national test that concurrently included WEA was held on October 3, 2018, at 2:18 PM
EDT. The message was expected to reach an estimated 75 percent of cell phones. The lead-up to the test attracted controversy, due to the false assumption that then-president
Donald Trump was personally executing the test, and reports suggesting that he could abuse the system to send personal messages similar to those he issued via
social media. A lawsuit was filed requesting a temporary restraining order blocking the test, claiming that it violated users'
First Amendment rights to be free from "
government-compelled listening", the system could allow the dissemination of "arbitrary, biased, irrational and/or content-based messages to hundreds of millions of people", and could frighten children. The suit was thrown out, citing that a Presidential alert can only be used to disseminate legitimate emergency messages. The judge also clarified that the test itself would be conducted and executed by FEMA employees, with no personal involvement from the President. On the day of the test,
John McAfee (then running for the
2020 United States presidential election) made a
false statement that the Presidential alert involved the
E911 system, alleged phones to have a "E911 chip" capable of giving the government access to the phone's location and microphone. The
Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that there is "no such thing as an E911 chip". Fact-checking website
Snopes stated that "WEA messages are not [related] to E911 functions". Another National Periodic Test of the Emergency Alert System took place on August 11, 2021, at 2:20 PM EDT, which also included a test message for Wireless Emergency Alerts. Unlike the first NPT for WEA that took place in 2018, the WEA portion of the test was only administered for phones that were opted in to receive the test message. However, it also sent the messages in both English and Spanish, depending on the language the phone was set to. It is unknown which language the message was sent for phones not set in English nor Spanish. A National Periodic Test of the Emergency Alert System took place on October 4, 2023, at 2:20 PM EDT. It was issued by mobile phone (Wireless Emergency Alert), radio, satellite radio, television, and cable television.
False alarms • On January 13, 2018, a
false alert of an inbound missile to Hawaii was mistakenly issued through EAS and WEA by the
Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, as the result of an employee error during a routine internal system test. • On March 2, 2021, as part of a scheduled
tornado drill, emergency alerts simulating a tornado warning were issued by the NWS in Kansas City for
Missouri and
Kansas. However, while the alert issued via the EAS did contain notices disclaiming that it was a test message, an actual tornado warning message was mistakenly issued via WEA due to a miscommunication surrounding the protocols for the drill. • On January 9, 2025, an erroneous evacuation alert was sent to cellphones across Los Angeles County, sparking panic across a region of millions where wildfires were occurring. The alert was supposed to target residents in the area of the West Hills neighborhood, which was threatened by the 1,000 acre Kenneth fire. Instead, cellphones across Los Angeles County received the alert. The county is the most populous in the nation, with 9.6 million people, though it was not immediately clear how many residents had received an alert. • On July 26, 2025, a shelter-in-place warning for
Deerfield Township, Ohio due to a SWAT standoff was accidentally sent to the entirety of the
Greater Cincinnati area and parts of Southern
Dayton.
Testing errors • On April 20, 2023, at 4:45 a.m. ET, a routine early-morning test of the EAS by the
Florida Division of Emergency Management for television stations was accidentally delivered via WEA as well, leading to many residents being woken up early. The error drew the ire of Governor
Ron DeSantis, who described the accident as a "completely inappropriate use of this system"; the state briefly rescinded its contract with
Everbridge to provide alerting services, but reinstated them shortly afterward.
Criticism Many members of the public disabled the alerts due to the alerts overriding silent settings on their phone and being of limited relevance to them. == Security ==