SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo — Summit County said an alert that went out to cell phones across the county Sunday morning, telling people to shelter in place and turn off their heating and air conditioning, was a mistake.
The alert was meant to go out to the entire county, emergency officials said, but the language was a mistake.
The alert went out around the time law enforcement shot and killed a man who witnesses said was waving a firearm and banging on residents' doors in the Summit Cove neighborhood.
At 7:50 a.m., cellphones across the county buzzed with an alert that said "The Summit County Office of Emergency Management has issued a shelter in place order for all persons in the area of INSERT GEOGRAPHIC AREA due to INSERT HAZARD. Take immediate shelter indoors. Close all windows and doors. Completely turn off any heading and air conditioning systems. This is not a test."
Trina Dummer, interim director of the Summit County 911 Center, told 9NEWS that an employee in training sent the alert under the watch of a supervisor. The employee chose the wrong template -- selecting one intended to warn people about an environmental hazard -- and then the template message was not updated, Dummer said.
Dummer told 9NEWS the center is committed to improving training and alerting.
"We are sincerely sorry for the trouble and the chaos that caused," she said.
About eight minutes later, a revised message went out. That message clarified the alert was only for the Summit Cove area, saying "The Summit County Office of Emergency Management has issued a shelter in place order for all persons in the area of Summit Cove due to a police emergency."
The second message contained the same advice to turn off heating and air conditioning systems.
An all clear message was sent out a few hours later.
Summit County Director of Emergency Management Brian Bovaird said the alerts were intended to go out to the whole county, not just the Summit Cove neighborhood.
Bovaird said the county's policy is to avoid targeting alerts to specific areas. When they do that, he said, limitations of cell towers and terrain, plus challenges with the Wireless Emergency Alerts system, lead to people outside the intended area getting the message anyway.
Bovaird said that policy changed recently, after testing in the fall showed how common it was for people outside the intended area to get alerts.
9NEWS previously reported that according to an FCC review, tests in Jefferson County and other communities across the country in September showed the process known as “geofencing” only works about one third of the time.
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