Shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday, phones across Los Angeles County lighted up with an emergency alert test, the latest example of challenges that cities are experiencing with wireless emergency alert systems.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many people received the test alert from South Pasadena, which read, “This is a test of the South Pasadena WEA system. There is no emergency.” L.A. Times employees across the county, including in Long Beach, downtown L.A. and Redondo Beach, reported receiving the test.
Wireless emergency alerts are sent out through a partnership among FEMA, the Federal Communications Commission, cellphone providers and local officials, who geographically code the alerts so they appear on phones in areas affected by public safety warnings.
The errant test was reminiscent of an alert that was erroneously sent to 10 million phones across L.A. County during the January firestorm, warning them to prepare to evacuate due to a fire. The alert was only meant to be sent to a small number of phones near Calabasas.
On Tuesday evening, public safety staff with the city of South Pasadena were performing an internal test of the WEA system when the message was accidentally sent to phones across the county, said city spokesperson Jennifer Colby.
The cause of the erroneous alert is under investigation. However, it is currently believed to be the result of human error and not a malfunction of the platform called Finalsite that the city uses to send alerts, she said.
She said the city apologized for the inconvenience caused by the mistake.
Any fallout from the accidental test alert is likely minimal, but the ramifications of similar mistakes can be serious during active emergencies.
For example, the erroneous alert that went out during the January firestorm stoked panic and confusion. That was compounded by “echoing alerts,” when the message pinged repeatedly and seemingly at random.
A federal report that looked into that alert issue found that the company contracted by the county to send out the emergency alerts, Genasys, experienced a technical issue that caused the initial, widespread alert. The “echoing” alerts were a symptom of cellphone providers experiencing overload due to the high volume and long duration of the alerts, the report found.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
