Many Occitanie residents to receive test alerts on their phone this weekend
Trials of the FR-Alert system have already taken place elsewhere
The alerts will be sent at some point before midday, the local prefecture has said
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Parts of the Occitanie region are set to test France’s national alert system by sending example warnings to mobile phones within certain communes this Saturday (May 17).
The tests, trialling the effectiveness of the FR-Alert national warning system, will be tested in Barcarès (Pyrénées Orientales) in the morning between 09:00 and 12:00, following tests earlier this week in Finistère (Brittany) and Oise (Hauts-de-France).
Mobile phones in the alert zone will receive a notification and begin emitting a ‘strong sound’, just as they would during a real alert.
However, the warnings on Saturday are only trials of the wider system, with recipients not in any real danger: “No action is required by any recipients, with the alerts being part of an exercise,” says the local prefecture on a Facebook post.
Those in the area – the warnings are sent via geolocation, so non-residents and tourists currently in a zone also receive them – should not pass on false information about the alerts, nor inundate emergency services with calls about them, the prefecture adds.
Similar to previous trials, the start of the warning message will indicate that the message is an ‘exercise’.
FR-Alert system being trialled
The system on trial is – FR-Alert – France’s national alert network.
In place since June 2022, it is intended to send warnings over issues such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks, serious accidents on the rail or road network, chemical or biological accidents, and any number of issues that may impact people nearby to an incident.
A major trial took place in the south-east in 2024, simulating a tsunami warning.
It was also tested in Paris prior to the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in the city.
As the warnings are sent via geolocation and mobile data all those in an area should receive them unless their mobile or use of mobile data (or for foreign visitors, data roaming) is switched off
This means the majority of people, including tourists with or without a French phone / others not from the area, should receive the alerts.
In some cases, the alerts will be translated for non-French mobile phones.
The system does not use an app, maximising the recipients that receive the warnings.
However, currently the technology only allows the warnings to be sent to more modern devices, those using 4G or 5G internet. In previous trials many have reported texts coming in after a prolonged delay.
If you expected to receive an alert but did not, our article, below, shows reasons why this may happen.
Read more: How to check you can receive FR-Alert warnings
