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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