Techniques for delivering and receiving emergency broadcast alert messages using Short Message Service (SMS) are described, In one design, a broadcast alert message for an emergency alert may be sent in an SMS broadcast message, e.g., by mapping at least one field of the broadcast alert message to corresponding Held(s) of the SMS broadcast message and mapping remaining Fields of the broadcast alert message to a data Field of the SMS broadcast message. The SMS broadcast message may include a website URI link, broadcast reception information, location information for an emergency event, etc. The SMS broadcast message may be carried in a system broadcast message sent to wireless devices. A wireless device may receive the system broadcast message, extract the SMS broadcast message, and obtain the broadcast alert message. The wireless device may detect for duplicate broadcast messages based on a hash digest generated for each broadcast message.