The prefectures of the Mediterranean departments send alerts to warn of a tsunami threat. The one sent this week is not to be taken lightly.
Prefectures are now able to warn the French of imminent threats, with the most recent and most effective communication tools. The smartphone is the ideal medium for all citizens to receive urgent information or to circulate it as quickly as possible. To ensure that such a message is transmitted well, a “tsunami exercise” is being organized in nine departments on the French coast this Friday.
What is it about ? Between 10 a.m. and 11:15 a.m., hundreds of thousands of people will receive a sound notification on their cell phones, to warn them that an underwater earthquake has occurred off the coast of Algeria, creating a tsunami that is expected to reach the whole from the French Mediterranean coast in just over an hour. This is a fictitious scenario, allowing the authorities and residents concerned to be put in a situation.
The simulation is very advanced: the test begins with the sending of an alert to the operational center for interministerial crisis management, which will pass it on to the 9 prefectures of the departments concerned: Alpes-Maritimes, Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, Gard , Hérault, Aude, Pyrénées-Orientales, Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud.
The message received by the citizens of these departments will depend on where they live and whether they live near or very close to the coast. The people most at risk will have these instructions:
- Evacuate shores more than 200 m from the coast
- Immediately reach a high point, on foot with an emergency kit
- Failing that, go upstairs in your house more than 5m high and stay there
- Wait for instructions from the authorities and listen to the radio
Please note, these instructions are fictitious, as reported by the Var department services, this exercise “does not call for any action on the part of the population, only the response to the questionnaire associated with the message in order to allow optimal feedback” . It is even asked not to over-request telephone calls from the police, emergency services (15, 18 and 112) and local authorities. Also be vigilant about false information on social networks regarding this exercise.
All this must therefore be taken seriously without burdening the emergency services. The objective is to make it possible to improve the planned system, now put in place by the FR-Alert system. It provides information on people located in real time in a given area (including those passing through and tourists).