The Australian government has planned to implement a phone warning system, Mobile Emergency Alert system to aware the people during bushfire and floods. It is likely to be operational soon.

The system can send hundreds of text and voice messages quickly to inform the residents about the fire’s movements.

According to the officials, the final testing is being undertaken at Victorian coastal town of Torquay before taking it into confidence.

It is expected that, the Mobile Emergency Alert system will be functional from the next summer. The officials are also confident of avoiding the loss of lives unlike the February’s tragedy when almost 173 people died due to blazing fires.

 ’This is a system that will save lives, there’s no doubt about that,’ Victorian Premier John Brumby said.

‘It is a system that will get a message out to people quickly and efficiently in life-threatening situations,’ he added.

At present, the alert system can issue warnings to the registered landlines and mobiles. But, it will be covered to all other areas as well.

Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin said, ‘I’m very comfortable that something exists, and we need to now work through and make sure it will work; we are insistent in making sure that this system will work in the way we want it to on the days we need it most.’

The mobile emergency alert system will be operated by Telstra and can be used during life-threatening situations like fires, floods and storms through a bush fire incident controller.

The new system can send 300 text messages a second and 1000 voice messages a minute. And the system can be operational during emergencies only.

Source: http://www.india-server.com/news/mobile-emergency-alert-system-to-start-17039.html