Cooper County EMA says not all subscribers received tornado watch due to error
Cooper County Emergency Management Agency, also known as EMA are one’s to notify residents within the area of any major disasters using Nixle but Wednesday around 5:30 pm, EMA issued an apology for an error that did not notify people who signed up for alerts.
“… I’ll take full responsibility, that I clicked on the wrong box. Soon as I was notified this morning that it didn’t go out, we corrected it. I wasn’t aware that it hadn’t gone out because I got an email saying that it been sent,” Oerly said.
Oerly said they recently upgraded their system with Nixle in January.
Those who sign up for email alerts, will also received any community events notifications but according to John Fortman, a deputy EMA Director, it’s not something EMA normally does and the bubble was accidently selected for community instead.
Oerly said, people who signed up for emails, they do that by editing there accounts online but text alerts, it’s done by texting 888-777 and sending your zip code to that number.
“We started investigating, and realize it only went out to only fifty phones instead of about two thousand,” Oerly said.
According to the Cooper County Emergency Management Agency, due to a settings error, the tornado watch for last night did not go out to all subscribers and issued this statement.
“The Tornado watch for last night only went out to those who get community messages and are sent directly from the NWS (Nixle) via this system. The error has been corrected and we will be monitoring the automatic alert to make sure they are going out. I apologize for anyone who did not get the Tornado Watch last night,” said Larry Oerly, director of Cooper County EMA.
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Oerly said he first was notified by a local radio station and apologies for any frustration this may have caused.
Thursday at 11:51 am EMA sent out an alert for a small risk of storms for Thursday night, so it appears they are back on track.
