Emergency alert message sent to B.C. mobile phones by mistake

An emergency alert message was sent to British Columbians on Wednesday by mistake.

Phones across the province lit up sometime after 12 p.m. with a test message that is part of the national Alert Ready system, which aims to improve public safety in the event of an emergency.

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A test of B.C.’s wireless alerting system took place on May 5.

EmergencyInfoBC confirmed that Wednesday’s message “was an accidental re-broadcast of last week’s test due to human error.”

A spokesperson for Emergency Management BC said the error happened when a worker conducting an internal test of the system accidentally followed the standard operating procedures for the external, public system.

Internal tests are performed multiple times per week in order to ensure the system is functional in the case of an emergency, they said.

“Emergency Management BC is reviewing what happened today, and current Alert Ready procedures, to help ensure this does not happen again in the future,” the spokesperson said. 

The Alert Ready system was developed after the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission mandated that all wireless service providers be capable of sending the wireless warnings back in 2017.

In 2018, accidental warnings appeared on cellphones, TV and radio in Hawaii that told people that a ballistic missile was headed toward the U.S. state.

Hawaii’s government later explained that human error caused the alert to be issued.

— With files from Simon Little and Kevin Nielsen