The National Civil Defense’s new high-risk disaster alert system went into operation this Wednesday (4) in the states of the South and Southeast regions. THE Civil Defense Alert uses the cell phone network to issue free alerts, with a text message and sound warning, suspending any content in use on the device’s screen, including those that are in silent mode.
Alerts are issued to the population in areas with 4G or 5G network coverage and with an imminent risk of flooding, floods, landslides, windstorms, hailstorms and other situations. People do not need to register in advance to receive self-protection information, it will be automatic.
The content of the alerts is the responsibility of the Civil Defenses of states and municipalities. Thus, in a given critical disaster forecast situation, be it hydrological, meteorological, geological, among others, these bodies will be able to send the Civil Defense Alert to the population that is in the area of potential risk.
According to the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development, the objective of the technology is to complement other emergency alert tools available to prevent and reduce the impacts caused by disasters, warning and guiding people who are in locations with imminent risk. The tool was created in partnership with the Ministry of Communications, the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) and four major mobile phone operators (Algar, Claro, Tim and Vivo).
The Civil Defense Alert is for cases of great danger disasters. For less intense disasters, with less compromise to people’s safety, the other mechanisms, such as SMS, pay TV, WhatsApp and Google, remain in force.
Last weekend, a demonstration alert was sent to 36 municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul and also to the city of Belo Horizonte (MG) as a way of showing the tool’s functionality to the population. In August this year, in a pilot project, Defesa Civil Alerta was tested in 11 Brazilian municipalities for 30 days.
“One month after the start of the pilot project, the population of the 11 cities approved the new National Civil Defense alert sending system. In a survey carried out in municipalities, 87% of people who responded to the questionnaire about the new feature evaluated the tool positively”, informed the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development.
