PORTLAND – A planned test of Portland’s emergency alert system failed on Thursday.
City Hall planned to send an alert out in audio, text and email to more than 300,000 people at 11 a.m. Fewer than one percent got the notices.
The system is similar to “reverse 9-1-1” to alert neighbors in case of localized crimes or disasters.
The Bureau of Emergency Management acknowledged “serious flaws."
“Clearly, this failure is a disappointment. If (Louisiana software vendor) First Call cannot adequately and immediately resolve the problem, we’ll have to reevaluate our service contract with them,” PBEM Director Carmen Merlo said. “We expected some room for improvement with this ambitious test. We did not expect this high degree of failure.”
First Call president Matthew Teague said "with any new software, load testing under live conditions is necessary to reveal issues that internal or small scale testing will miss and the problems encountered today are currently being addressed.”
The test notification was an audio message recorded by Mayor Sam Adams sent by phone. Register for future notifications by signing up at www.PublicAlerts.org.
