'Evacuate Now' Alert Accidentally Sent Out In Six Northern Minnesota Counties
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Wednesday morning began with a tune far more disturbing than the local church bells for many folks in Pine City.
At 7:52 a.m., their cellphones sounded with an emergency alert tone and text instructing them to "evacuate now." The text message also indicated the alert would last for the next 14 minutes.
"Well, it would sort of concern me, but I wouldn't know what to do, or where to go, where to evacuate to," local resident Kay Rarick said.
Pine County Emergency Management Coordinator Denise Baran, says the sheriff's dispatch center was overwhelmed with panicked callers.
The message was sent by the state's Homeland Security Emergency Management center in St. Paul, and it was both alarming and vague. Those who received the text were not instructed where to evacuate to or the nature of any emergency.
"It hit the AT&T phones, not the Verizon phones, primarily for this county, and it created panic," Baran said.
The alert omitted wording that would have indicated it was only a test and was not intended to go public. A probe is now underway to find out what went wrong.
"Homeland Security Emergency Management reached out to every 911 call center in the state of Minnesota to let them know of the message that had gone out inadvertently. They did that within 10 minutes," Department of Public Safety Spokesman Bruce Gordon said.
Though not as alarming, the errant text rekindles memories of the 2018 drill in Hawaii. That mistake warned residents of incoming missiles.
In times of storms, disasters or impending doom, the wireless emergency alert system is beneficial to public safety.
"We obviously want to know what happened so it doesn't happen again," Gordon said.
Fortunately, the mistaken test was quickly retracted, both on social media and cellphones -- bringing ease to unfortunate alarm.
"It could have been worse," Baran said.
The mistaken alert was limited to those in Aitkin, Carlton, Cass, Pine, Itasca and St. Louis counties.