Civ-Alert

Civ-Alert was the civil defense warning system in the U.S. state of Hawaii from 1960 to 1977. Civ-Alert was established in the wake of the tsunami generated by the 1960 Valdivia earthquake on the Chilean coast, which devastated Hilo. Unlike CONELRAD, the warning system in use in the mainland United States, Civ-Alert consisted of the transmission of civil defense information and instructions from a studio at state Civil Defense headquarters in Diamond Head on existing radio station frequencies; this was important, as no one radio station could cover the entire Hawaiian islands. The Civ-Alert system was a major improvement. It led to the redesign of emergency warnings in the mainland U.S. as a similar system, the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS). Civ-Alert was rebranded as EBS in May 1977.