Report: Alaska’s mobile emergency alert system failed during recent earthquake

August 11 – State and federal officials say they still don’t know why so many Anchorage and Matt-Sue residents received mobile emergency alerts during a tsunami warning in late July.

The city of Anchorage is almost not at risk of a tsunami, even during a major earthquake, and the National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer has not sent an alert to cellphones in Alaska’s largest city. Many residents received warning letters anyway. Many others did not.

According to records and data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the state of Alaska and the National Weather Service – which operates the Tsunami Warning Center – the warnings should have been sent only to cell phones in the Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak Peninsula, the Alaskan Peninsula and in parts of the Aleutian Islands.

How the messages reached beyond that region remains a mystery.

“This isn’t the last time this will happen, it’s likely, and it has happened before,” said Audrey Gray, director of emergency programs for the municipality of Anchorage.

The mobile alert system will be tested at 10:20 a.m. Wednesday nationwide, but the test won’t address the problems seen with targeting alerts in Alaska.

Repeating false warnings

Over the past several years, Anchorage residents have repeatedly received alerts intended for people in other parts of the state. Changes have been made to fix problems previously discovered, said Brian Fisher, director of the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Last month’s alert appears to have revealed a new problem.

Yasmine Blackwell, a spokeswoman for the National Weather Service, said the July message was not a false alarm: There was a tsunami warning, and that warning got to the people who should get it.

“Ultimately, I’d rather warn parts of the state than necessary, as opposed to local communities who don’t warn and need to take action,” Fisher said.

The dangers of not warning are clear: people may remain on the path of disaster that could infect or kill them.

But over-warning also creates risks. Evacuation warnings can cause confusion, and if you go to the wrong people, they can send them down the path of danger instead of out of it. The wrong messages can distract emergency officials and, if repeated, can cause recipients to ignore a real emergency.

During the tsunami warning on July 28, agencies did not widely say that Anchorage’s warning was a mistake until later.

The Anchorage National Weather Service posted a short message on Twitter, as did the Anchorage Mayor’s Office, but there was no notice from state officials or the Tsunami Warning Center.

“We have focused on reaching out to the communities in the alert and advisory area and making sure they receive the warning,” said Jeremy Zedek, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

“The WEA system is a public-private partnership and sometimes it takes time to determine whether or how a message is being transmitted unintentionally,” Zedek said. “In the evening a tsunami warning was issued, we didn’t have the data to issue some kind of correction. In addition, we leave issuing the tsunami warnings to the Tsunami Warning Center where they have all the detectors and great scientific minds to interpret the data.”

Because we didn’t send a false alarm, we won’t send a correction — something to correct — because we didn’t send a false alarm,” Blackwell said at the National Weather Service.

After the November 2018 earthquake in south-central Alaska, officials said the inability to target alerts accurately prevented them from sending a mobile alert “due to concerns that people who were not affected by the earthquake would receive the alert,” according to the Government Accountability Office. Analytics.

Different agencies use different warning maps

Fisher said the warning messages reach mobile phones through a “fairly complex” process.

“The (Tsunami) Warning Center sends their message. It’s sent via email and text messages to some people. It goes through NOAA’s advanced weather information processing system, AWIPS, and that system feeds it to FEMA. And when it gets to FEMA, FEMA IPAWS does. , based on any parameters, sends it to the emergency alert system (and) sends it to the wireless emergency alert system.”

Radio and television stations spread the message of the emergency alert system, while cell phone companies take the radio alert and send it to phones in an area designated by FEMA.

On the night of July 28, at least one radio station in Southcentral Alaska broadcast a radio alert stating that Anchorage and Matt Sue had been covered by a tsunami warning. That wasn’t accurate, and state officials are working with broadcasters to figure out how to add this misinformation. But as part of the state’s plan to publish tsunami warnings, this bug should not affect cellphone alerts.

When it comes to mobile alerts, FEMA is moving toward a system that allows administrators to draw a shape on a map, alerting everyone in the relevant area. This equipment is not yet in place in Alaska. Instead, officials select from pre-determined areas whose boundaries are determined by Census Bureau data.

For its forecasts and warnings, the weather service uses a different map with smaller areas.

In previous emergencies, Anchorage residents received alerts due to those different criteria. Fisher said he remembers a case when the weather service issued a blizzard warning for Turnagain Pass, but that activated the emergency alert system throughout Anchorage because FEMA couldn’t send a more targeted message.

State and federal officials were aware of the problem when an 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck the Alaskan Peninsula on the evening of July 28, triggering a tsunami warning.

When the tsunami warning was issued, it included “Area 125,” which covers the eastern Kenai Peninsula and Girdwood, said Blackwell, a weather service spokeswoman.

Girdwood is located in the municipality of Anchorage, and this may have triggered the mobile phone alerts, but FEMA technical data shows that Anchorage was not included in the mobile phone alert area.

“Based on the emails, stuff that appeared on tsunami.gov, and the email notifications we received, it was clear — at least in text — that they had this warning to a specific location,” Fisher said.

Officials are now turning their attention to mobile phone providers. Both AT&T customers and GCI customers reported receiving the alert, making it unlikely that an individual cell phone company was at fault.

GCI spokeswoman Heather Handyside said phone companies only pass alerts through and “make no decision on who should or should not get them.”

There is some wiggle room. If a cell phone in South Anchorage or Girdwood is connected to a cell tower on the Kenai Peninsula, it may receive an alert directed at Kenai.

Handyside, Fisher, and others said it’s important to keep in mind that the mobile alert system is constantly being upgraded and changed, even if it’s to keep up with new models of cell phones.

“It’s a bit like redesigning a sailboat while it’s sailing,” said Zedek, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

“Every time we have an actual tsunami warning, we learn something about the system and make it better,” he said. “Every time we test the system, we learn something about the system and make it better.”

Here’s how to check if your phone is set up to receive emergency alerts

At approximately 10:20 a.m. Wednesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will conduct a nationwide test of the mobile emergency alert system. These alerts are not activated on some mobile phones by default.

The Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management created a video to show how they operate. The FCC has step-by-step instructions with pictures.

On your iPhone, open Settings, tap Notifications and scroll to the bottom to access Government Alerts. Turn on the “Emergency Alerts” and “Public Safety Alerts” switches if they are not already activated.

To activate the test alerts, open the phone keypad, then dial *5005*25371# and hit the call button. An alert will pop up saying ‘Test alerts are enabled’. Press “Ignore” to close the alert window. You will still receive the test message.

On Android, go to Settings > Connections > More Call Settings > Wireless Alerts. Tap the three-dot icon arranged vertically, then select Settings and turn on the switches for different types of alerts.

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(c) 2021 Alaska Dispatch News (Anchorage, Alaska)

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