In the event of severe weather, natural disasters, and other emergencies, receiving accurate information from official sources in a timely manner can be life-saving. Your smartphone can alert you to everything from public safety issues like widespread power outages to imminent threats like flash floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes, giving you a buffer to get out of harm’s way.
Of course, you should also keep abreast of conditions in your area—especially during known severe weather seasons—and be prepared with various emergency kits and the best mobile apps to navigate emergencies of all kinds. But if you only do one thing, enable these essential alerts on your iPhone or Android.
How to enable emergency alerts on iPhone
Government alerts, which include public safety, emergency, and AMBER alerts, are enabled by default on your iPhone. To confirm yours are turned on, go to Settings > Notifications and scroll down to the Government Alerts section, where you can toggle alerts on or off. There’s also a toggle for test alerts—system tests run by state and local emergency management agencies—which are off by default.
Click on Emergency Alerts to open an additional menu with toggles for Local Awareness (which improves the accuracy and timeliness of alerts targeted to your area, such as earthquake alerts in California, Oregon, and Washington) and Always Play Sound (recommended, as it ensures you hear alerts even if your device is on silent).
As outlined by the California Learning Resource Network , emergency or imminent threat alerts on iOS include severe weather or disaster warnings issued by the National Weather Service as well as state and local authorities, while public safety alerts cover civil emergencies, power outages, and hazmat incidents. All devices receive alerts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the event of a national emergency.
How to enable emergency alerts on Android
Android users can turn on government-issued emergency alerts under Settings > Safety and emergency > Wireless emergency alerts. You can also search “wireless emergency alerts”. Flip the toggle next to the alerts you want to receive (which include all the same options as on iOS).
Google also has a built-in earthquake alert system for Android, which detects and issues warnings ahead of the worst shaking based on accelerometer data collected from users’ devices. Alerts are on by default (see Settings > Safety and emergency > Earthquake alerts) and include messages to either “be aware” or “take action,” with notifications breaking through even if you have Do Not Disturb on. While Google’s is an Android-wide system, Samsung Galaxy users may soon see even more granular setting options for earthquake warnings.
Sign up for other alert services
While your phone’s built-in alerts are a baseline, it doesn’t hurt to have some redundancy, ensuring you don’t miss critical information. The FEMA app allows you to set your primary location and which emergency alerts you want to receive, while apps like Storm Shield and NOAA’s Weather Radar & Forecast (iOS , Android ) can give you detailed weather information in real time with alerts via push notification for multiple locations.
You should look up emergency alerts for your city or county, which may offer more localized information for everything from severe weather to traffic and road conditions in addition to those already sent via government alerts.
