Summit County staff say the evacuation alert that lit up cell phones from Evanston, Wyoming, to Salt Lake City to Wasatch County Aug. 9 was meant for only 107 people.
In the back end of the software that Summit County used to send it, staff say everything looked normal.
County spokesperson Derek Siddoway also said they had drafted a specific message with information about the Rocky Canyon Fire near Henefer. What residents received didn’t have any of that — it only said evacuate.
“That was not the message that was sent out. So not only are we concerned about the area that received the message, but also the language in the message,” Siddoway said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Aug. 11. “So there's kind of two separate failures that we're looking into there.”
County Manager Shayne Scott was also puzzled by the wide radius of the alert.
He says Summit County emergency managers do not have the ability to send alerts across county borders, much less the Wyoming state line.
“You can see the geography of it,” Scott said, explaining how the software looks behind the scenes. “As you draw that line … it will actually tell you how many people that message should reach. And then of course it says exactly what the message should say. A human does hit the send button, but it's under those circumstances, when you've already approved it.”
Local officials say the system is now working as it should, and they’ve sent out successful notifications since Aug. 9.
But until they speak with their software provider, Scott says they won’t be sure exactly what the glitch was. The priority right now is fighting the Rocky Canyon Fire.
Summit County will be preparing a report on the erroneous emergency alert after the blaze dies down.
The Rocky Canyon Fire has burned more than 13,000 acres in Morgan and Summit counties, triggering evacuations in some areas.
