It was yesterday or the day before that I agreed with someone, maybe went further, and said I had never heard an emergency alert on the radio or tv, even though I had heard those annoying test tones at least a dozen times a year for the last 50 or more years.
Well. just now, maybe less than a day later, I heard one. I was listening to WTOP, an all news radio station in Washington DC. I was listening to the webcast which is identical to what goes over the air. I was muting the station but I heard part of the tone, and maybe "This is an alert" so I went back to it, and heard a complet alert, from Sterling Va. for a tornado, which had been seen near there. This was at 7:53 and the alert was in effect until 8:15, and they listed parts of
3 counties that you have never hard up. Stafford, Culpepper, and another.Fairly rural areas and quite far from me, but that doesn't change the coincidence.
Quite amazign that 24 hours after I tabulate 50 years comes an excepttion, the first exception, to those 50 years.
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And at 8:04 A woman with an intense voice "We interrupt this program with important emergency information to fllow". [followed by the introductory tones] [an intense message, extending the time to midnight and extending the area to mid-Maryland] [followed by the closing tones... Did you realize they are different?] Then the same woman with a different tone of voice, more typical of the news, talking a little and introducing an ABC news guy. He claimed the alert was just until 8:15, which is only a few minutes from now.
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