Residents of the entire state of Connecticut were
ordered to evacuate yesterday, after someone in the state emergency management department accidentally "pressed the wrong button" and sent out the evacuation message to broadcasters (thanks to Gary for forwarding the story). Even though TV and radio listeners were told that the state was being evacuated, nobody paid any attention. The police didn't even receive any calls about it. Obviously Connecticut needs to revise its emergency evacuation message. Something more along the lines of '
the state has been invaded by Martians' proved quite effective in nearby New Jersey in 1938.
Yesterday's incident recalls the time on February 20, 1971 when the National Emergency Warning Center in Colorado mistakenly told broadcasters that the country was under nuclear attack. The nuclear alert included the proper code word, 'HATEFULNESS', which meant that broadcasters should have treated it as real, but almost all of them just ignored it. Great to know people take these emergency alerts so seriously.
Comments
But as someone who spent the entire day in Connecticut yesterday, with the TV in my office on throughout the afternoon I must say this is the first I've heard of this. This had to be the least effective emergency broadcast in history.
Kind of like my opinion on school fire drills: by the time you get all those idiots out of the school and a proper distance away from the building, we'll all be burned up anyway.
It also appears that "false alarms" happen more often than not. But if someone sends me an alarm with "hatefullness" on it, I'll make sure to grab the cat and go down to that nuclear war bunker I dug in my back yard.
http://www.kfor.com/Global/story.asp?S=1687488
Last night would have been a bad night to be forced to evacuate, as it was sleeting. Maybe that's why no one listened.
Our quarterly fire drills at work are actually dangerous - dim, steep, concrete stairwell with steps so tiny I have to walk like an Egyptian.