ISLIP, N.Y.
– Federal officials in New York are
investigating an emergency alert system after a mistakenly truncated message
about storm system Hermine wrongly advised TV watchers on Long Island of an
ordered evacuation, authorities said Sunday.
The Saturday
night confusion started after Suffolk County emergency officials used an aspect
of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's alert system for the first time
since gaining access to it after Superstorm Sandy. They had hoped to advise
viewers that a voluntary evacuation had been ordered for Fire Island, a thin
strip of land off of Long Island's southern shore and a popular summertime
destination.
Instead,
somehow only the first part of the message — that an evacuation order had been
issued — was broadcast to viewers. That the order was voluntary and only
applied to those on Fire Island didn't make it onto TV screens.
"It
caused obvious and expected questioning," said Gregory Miniutti, chief of
communication for Suffolk County's Department of Fire Rescue.
Lauren
Lefebvre, a spokeswoman for the FEMA region that covers New York, said
officials are investigating what caused the message to be shortened.
It wasn't
immediately clear how many TV viewers saw the wrong alert. Nearly 3 million
people live on Long Island, with 1.5 million people in Suffolk County and
another roughly 1.3 in Nassau County, census records show.
After county
officials realized the misleading alert had been sent to the public around 7:30
p.m. Saturday from FEMA's Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, a
clarifying alert was subsequently issued, Miniutti said.
Emergency
officials gained access to the FEMA broadcast system after 2012, when
Superstorm Sandy caused major devastation, flooding and even deaths across Long
Island and throughout New York and New Jersey.
Suffolk County
normally uses another system that sends out emergency messages and mass
notifications through text messages or reverse 911 calls to landlines, Miniutti
said. But on Saturday evening officials decided to use the FEMA broadcast
system because most of the people on Fire Island are tourists and visitors who
don't have landlines or sign up for emergency alerts on their phones, he said.
SOURCE: FOX NEWS
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