Civil Defence warning system error alerts NZ to earthquake that didn't happen
Thursday, 14 March 2019
Civil Defence is investigating how a tsunami warning that was meant to be an internal training exercise was accidentally sent to national media and posted on social media.
The Director of the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, Sarah Stuart-Black, said that the alert was a duplication of an old event notification, which had been sent by mistake.
'The message was rescinded within a few minutes, but I would apologise for any confusion and alarm,' she said.
The tweet we have deleted related to an old earthquake notification. There is no current event. We apologise for any confusion.
— MCDEM (@NZcivildefence) March 14, 2019
'We are now working to understand why it happened and how to prevent it from happening again.'
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The false alert warned of a 6.6 Magnitude earthquake south of the Kermadec Islands, and said they were assessing the earthquake parameters to determine if there is a tsunami risk to New Zealand.It said a further update would be sent when the assessment was complete.
It also warned people in coastal areas to take precautions such as staying off beaches and listening to the radio for updates.
A second email and tweet were sent 12 minutes after the initial alert, and Stuff also received an automated phone call clarifying the mistake.
It is believed that staff were using a training site - a duplicate of the national warning system that was not meant to be live.
Stuart-Black said it appeared to have been a 'system level issue', not human error, though they were 'still getting to the bottom of that'.
The earthquake which triggered the false alarm actually occurred at 3:54pm on March 6. No warning was sent out at the time.
Stuart-Black said the size and location meant the threat didn't meet any of Civil Defence's thresholds for a warning or alert.
It's not the first time this has happened. In February 2017, Civil Defence sent an urgent tsunami warning after a non-existent 8.7 magnitude earthquake.
It called for an immediate national broadcast of the warning and was marked was priority 1 - a life-threatening event of national significance.
In that instance, it took six minutes for the message to be rescinded.
Stuart-Black said the 2017 error was a test message generated by a training group, which was why the training site, disconnected from the live site, had been built in the first place. However, that apparently wasn't enough of a safeguard.