On February 1, 2005, the Emergency Alert System was activated in portions of Connecticut calling for the immediate evacuation of the entire state. The activation was in error. Later studies showed that residents did not evacuate, and that the most common response was to 'change the channel' or seek other confirmation.
The Emergency Alert System (EAS) is a public warning system in the United States that allows designated government authorities to suspend and preempt terrestrial radio and television broadcasts when needed to issue urgent public safety alerts. The highest priority alert that can be issued is an Emergency Action Notification (EAN), sometimes called a "presidential alert". An EAN sets into motion a series of events that causes all of the United States' television and radio stations to become networked together to simulcast the President of the United States, or another federal official. An Emergency Action Notification has never been used for an actual event. However, local and state-level activations of the EAS routinely occur for emergencies such as tornadoes, 911 system outages, and other, localized, exigent events. [1] [2]
At 2:10 p.m. on Tuesday, February 1, 2005, a state-level activation of the EAS occurred in Connecticut. [3] A scheduled, unannounced test of the system had been planned for that day. However, the system instead informed television and radio stations that an evacuation of the state was underway. Both the Connecticut Office of Emergency Management and Governor Jodi Rell issued statements shortly after the broadcast confirming the activation had been in error and there was no evacuation underway, though clarifications were not issued until more than an hour after the transmission. [4]
Officials initially blamed hackers for the misactivation, though an employee of the state's Office of Emergency Management later said they had accidentally registered the incorrect code prior to what should have been an EAS test, prompting the broadcast of the evacuation notification instead of the test message. [3]
According to media reports, the message broadcast began, "civil authorities have issued an immediate evacuation order for all of Connecticut, beginning at 2:10 p.m. and ending at 3:10 p.m". [5]
Despite the critical nature of the message, officials from the Connecticut State Police reported they received no calls from the public inquiring as to its authenticity or the circumstances that would require the evacuation of Connecticut. [4] Though some local police reportedly received calls from members of the public, the message "failed to set off a noticeable exodus into Massachusetts, Rhode Island or New York". [3]
A study conducted after the activation discovered that 11 percent of the state's residents had received the warning while it was being broadcast. Of those persons, 63 percent reported they were "a little or not at all concerned" when receiving it. The most common reaction reported by residents was to seek confirmation of the emergency by changing channels; other common reactions were looking outside or consulting neighbors, and only one percent of persons surveyed who heard the broadcast actually attempted to flee Connecticut. [6]
The most common reasons given by people for not following the evacuation orders were because no specific threat was described in the broadcast, because no specific area was mentioned other than "the entire state of Connecticut", and because there was no observable activity indicative of an emergency. [6]
The Emergency Broadcast System (EBS), sometimes called the Emergency Action Notification System (EANS), was an emergency warning system used in the United States. It was the most commonly used, along with the Emergency Override system. It replaced the previous CONELRAD system and was used from 1963 to 1997, at which point it was replaced by the Emergency Alert System.
CONELRAD was a method of emergency broadcasting to the public of the United States in the event of enemy attack during the Cold War. It was intended to allow continuous broadcast of civil defense information to the public using radio stations, while rapidly switching the transmitter stations to make the broadcasts unsuitable for Soviet bombers that might attempt to home in on the signals.
The Emergency Alert System (EAS) is a national warning system in the United States designed to allow authorized officials to broadcast emergency alerts and warning messages to the public via cable, satellite and broadcast television and both AM, FM and satellite radio. Informally, Emergency Alert System is sometimes conflated with its mobile phone counterpart Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), a different but related system. However, both the EAS and WEA, among other systems, are coordinated under the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS). The EAS, and more broadly IPAWS, allows federal, state, and local authorities to efficiently broadcast emergency alert and warning messages across multiple channels. The EAS became operational on January 1, 1997, after being approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in November 1994, replacing the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS), and largely supplanted Local Access Alert systems, though Local Access Alert systems are still used from time to time. Its main improvement over the EBS, and perhaps its most distinctive feature, is its application of a digitally encoded audio signal known as Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME), which is responsible for the characteristic "screeching" or "chirping" sounds at the start and end of each message. The first signal is the "header" which encodes, among other information, the alert type and locations, or the specific area that should receive the message. The last short burst marks the end-of-message. These signals are read by specialized encoder-decoder equipment. This design allows for automated station-to-station relay of alerts to only the area the alert was intended for.
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NOAA Weather Radio (NWR), also known as NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards, is an automated 24-hour network of VHF FM weather radio stations in the United States that broadcast weather information directly from a nearby National Weather Service office. The routine programming cycle includes local or regional weather forecasts, synopsis, climate summaries or zone/lake/coastal waters forecasts. During severe conditions the cycle is shortened into: hazardous weather outlooks, short-term forecasts, special weather statements or tropical weather summaries. It occasionally broadcasts other non-weather related events such as national security statements, natural disaster information, environmental and public safety statements, civil emergencies, fires, evacuation orders, and other hazards sourced from the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Emergency Alert System. NOAA Weather Radio uses automated broadcast technology that allows for the recycling of segments featured in one broadcast cycle into another and more regular updating of segments to each of the transmitters. It also speeds up the warning transmitting process.
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Wireless Emergency Alerts, is an alerting network in the United States designed to disseminate emergency alerts to mobile devices such as cell phones and pagers. Organizations are able to disseminate and coordinate emergency alerts and warning messages through WEA and other public systems by means of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System.
A National Emergency Message, formerly known until 2022 as an Emergency Action Notification, is the national activation of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) used to alert the residents of the United States of a national or global emergency such as a nuclear war or any other mass casualty situation. This alert can only be activated by the president of the United States or a designated representative thereof, such as the vice president. The Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) also carried the Emergency Action Notification. Except for the 2011 national test, which utilized the Emergency Action Notification alert type, no president has ever issued a National Emergency Message.
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