Phone alert picked up in Northland but not loud and clear

The Civil Defence alert sent to about two million mobile phones on Sunday.

The second airing of an emergency alert test via mobile phones has been hailed as a success — although the variety of alarms and a failure of some phones to receive it has some Northlanders perplexed.

Having misread the word ''test'' for ''text'', many were effectively, if unexpectedly, alerted when their phone erupted into raucous, penetrating sound at 6.18pm on Sunday evening.

The system tripped emergency declarations in different voices on some makes of phones, possibly those bought overseas or parallel imported.

One Northland man was surprised when his phone screen announced in bold letters ''PRESIDENTIAL ALERT''.

Some phones that received an accidental test of the system seven weeks ago did not get one this time, and others in blackspots that don't usually pick up signals did get Sunday's alert.

Statistics would be available in about two weeks on how many Northlanders were among the estimated two million phone owners who received the first official nationwide test.

The first, early October trial test of the system trialled in Europe was a disaster in itself after being let off during northern hemisphere hours — 1.32 am in New Zealand — and reaching a wider net of Vodafone subscribers than the small target circuit.

This time around the test was aimed at all phone makes and was not network dependent.

Northland Civil Defence Emergency Management spokesman Murray Soljak said feedback included people being taken by surprise by the well-promoted test or not knowing how to turn off the alarms, which meant some received them multiple times.

Mr Soljak urged people with queries, concerns and other feedback to answer a survey on the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management (MCDEM) website.

''They are genuinely wanting feedback. They need to know if there are pockets or groupings of models or blackspots where it worked or didn't,'' he said. ''People should go online and hit that survey form.''

People did not necessarily have to download an app or subscribe to a service to get the warning texts. The setting to opt in or out of Emergency Alerts could be found under Settings on most smartphones.

Sarah Stuart-Black, director of MCDEM, said the test met expectations by going to about a third of New Zealanders.

More people would be included in the system over time as they upgraded their phones or downloaded the latest software updates.

Check the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5D7QWY5
or MCDEM Fb page