If you receive a tsunami warning, don't panic.
Residents of towns in nine departments bordering the Mediterranean will receive a “FR-Alert” alert this Friday morning during a full-scale test carried out between 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.
In addition to checking the reliability of the device, this exercise is also set up to raise awareness among the population about the risk of tsunami.
The people concerned by this alert are the inhabitants of Alpes-Maritimes, Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, Gard, Hérault, Aude, Pyrénées-Orientales, Haute-Corse and South Corsica.
Also read: Earthquake and tsunami in Japan: how the country learned to live with the risk of the worst
Set up to notify of the presence of a danger and to inform anyone with a mobile phone of the behaviors to adopt to protect themselves, this alert does not call for “any action”, specify the prefectures of the departments concerned.
You should therefore not contact the police and emergency services, nor “spread false information on social networks”, they add.
[#Exercise] 📲 Test of the Fr-Alert device as part of a #Tsunami exercise in the Mediterranean 🌊
📢 This 01/19 between 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., you will receive a notification and a specific sound signal on your phone, even if it -this is in silent mode or airplane mode pic.twitter.com/x2sUtG6sck
— Prefect Haute-Corse (@Prefet2B) January 19, 2024
Tsunami risk close to 100% in the region
The notification will appear by itself on the phones of the people concerned, with a specific sound signal, even if the cell phone is in silent mode.
The end of the alert will also be subject to sending a notification.
Depending on the phone, the operator or the location in which the inhabitants are located,
delivery times may be different.
Initially planned for the beginning of November, this test was postponed due to storm Ciaran and the risk of confusion among the population.
If this exercise is carried out this time for preventive purposes, it is far from trivial.
Indeed, the coastline of the targeted departments is likely to be affected by earthquakes occurring in the Mediterranean.
In June 2022, UNESCO experts estimated that residents and authorities in coastal regions of the Mediterranean were insufficiently prepared for the possibility of a tsunami.
According to them, the probability of a tsunami wave of more than one meter in the Mediterranean is close to 100% in the next thirty years.