However, multiple people outside the township, including in Montgomery and Butler counties received the message.
“When the alert was issues, it inadvertently went to a much larger audience than intended and did not include the full message,” Warren County EMA said. “Thus, follow-up alerts were sent to provide additional details.”
Initially, it was believed a technical malfunction caused the alert to be sent to additional communities. Once the alerts were sent, an investigation began and determined the IPAWS system did not malfunction, and the error was human made.
Additional and more in-depth training on IPAWS, including how to send alerts and create effective messages, is being conducted and will continue.
The agency is also completing a thorough review and update of the county’s IPAWS policy instruction.
When an IPAWS alert is issued, the message is broadcasted from cell towers to mobile devices in the affected area/cell tower coverage area, according to Warren County EMA.
“To send the alert to a specific, smaller geographic location, a polygon can be drawn on the map,” the agency said. “Which then will only send the alert to the cell towers in that area.”
If the shape isn’t completed, the system defaults to sending the alert to the entire county.
On Saturday, Warren County EMA believed a polygon was completed, but an investigation determined it was not. Therefore, the alert went to all of Warren County and some surrounding communities.
IPAWS also has 90- and 360-character alerts. When Saturday’s alert was initially entered into the system, the details were put into the required 90-character box and additional information was in the 360-character box, the agency said.
“There was a belief that everyone would receive the 90-character information and those with the ability to receive the 360-character message would receive the information in both the 90- and 360-character boxes,” Warren County EMA said. “In actuality, the 90-character information is sent to mobile devices on the 3G or older networks. The 360-character is sent to those on 4G or newer networks.”
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