Shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday, phones in Los Angeles County rang with the sound of an emergency alert test, the latest example of the challenges cities are facing with wireless emergency alert systems.
It’s unclear how many people received the testing alert from South Pasadena, which read: “This is a test of the South Pasadena WEA system. There is no emergency.” Los Angeles Times employees countywide, including Long Beach, downtown Los Angeles and Redondo Beach, reported being tested.
Wireless emergency alerts are issued through a collaboration between FEMA, the Federal Communications Commission, cell phone providers and local officials, who geocode alerts so that they appear on cell phones in areas affected by public safety warnings.
The erroneous test was reminiscent of an alert that was mistakenly sent to 10 million cellphones in Los Angeles County during the January fires, warning them to prepare to evacuate due to fires. The alert was sent to only a handful of phones around Calabasas.
South Pasadena public safety personnel were conducting internal testing of the WEA system Tuesday night when the message was accidentally sent to cellphones across the county, city spokesperson Jennifer Colby said.
The cause of the false alarm is under investigation. However, she said it is currently believed to be the result of human error and not a glitch in the platform the city uses to send alerts, called Finalsite.
She said the city apologized for the inconvenience the error caused.
Any consequences of an unexpected test alert are likely to be minor, but in an emergency the consequences of a similar error can be severe.
For example, false alarms sent during fires in January caused panic and confusion. The situation becomes even more complicated when messages sound “echo alerts” repeatedly and seemingly at random.
A federal report investigating issues with the alert found that Genasys, the company the county contracted to send emergency alerts, encountered technical issues that led to the initial widespread alert. The report found that “echo” alerts are a symptom of overload on cell phone providers due to high volume and long duration of alerts.
