A technical error caused an emergency alert advising people to shelter in place to be mistakenly sent to phones across Maine, state emergency officials said.
An emergency alert that was supposed to go only to phones in the immediate area of Friday’s shooting in Windham was instead sent to all cellphone users in Maine. The alert violated the state’s policies and emergency management principles that say the smallest number of affected people should get these kinds of alerts.
The glitch is being investigated by the software company the state uses to issue the alerts, Vanessa Sperrey, a spokesperson for the Maine Emergency Management Agency, said. The alert was sent through the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, which is a national emergency alert system managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The system allows authorized agencies to send alerts to the public that are meant to be timely and geographically targeted. The alerts can be sent a number of ways, but Friday’s was one that specifically targets cellphones that are used in a geographic area, according to FEMA.
On Friday following the shooting, the Cumberland County Emergency Management Agency asked MEMA to send out the alert and specifically requested the alert only be issued to cellphones along the Windham-Raymond line, said Michael Durkin, the director of Cumberland County EMA.
Once MEMA received the request, staff used the software platform CodeRED by Crisis24 to access the federal government’s emergency network. To use the software staff have to select a geographic area to receive an alert. In this case, that failed and sent the alert statewide, Sperrey said.
Members of MEMA have contacted CodeRED to alert them of the issue, she said. Its parent company is investigating the issue, Sperrey said. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The state policy that governs the use of the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System calls for the system to not be overused and to specifically target areas most in need of the information to avoid eroding the publics’ trust.
“Overuse of the system diminishes the effectiveness of IPAWS as citizens are more likely to ignore or opt-out of receiving notifications if they receive too many alerts,” the state’s policy says. “Misuse of the system when there is not an immediate threat, reduces the credibility of IPAWS alerts.”
Friday’s alert was issued just after 4:15 p.m. The shooting was reported at 1:55 p.m. at the intersection of U.S. Route 302 and Landing Road, according to a press release from the Maine State Police.
Witnesses told responding police officers that a man, later identified as James Ford of Windham, had pulled up next to and fired a gun multiple times at motorcyclist Erin Hayne of Casco, state police said. Hayne was pronounced dead at the scene and the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. Ford was later found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot, according to the release.
Other states have seen emergency alert errors. In January, millions of people in Los Angeles County were erroneously sent an emergency alert about a wildfire rather than only those in the proximity of the fire, the Associated Press reported in May. The alert message was only supposed to go to people who needed to evacuate due to the Kenneth Fire.
According to a report from U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-California, county officials properly coded the alert to reach the wireless devices of a more limited group of people. However, the alert was sent to residents across the county of 10 million people causing alarm and confusion on the heels of two days of devastating wildfires.
Bangor Daily News investigative reporter Sawyer Loftus may be reached at sloftus@bangordailynews.com.