A mass alert sent to cell phones in Brown County caused confusion Tuesday evening as it urged residents to evacuate.
Brown County Emergency Management Coordinator Lauri Maki says cell phones throughout the county had alerts sent out, even miles away from the gas leak in the 500 block of Edgewood Drive in Green Bay that triggered it.
“It was requested that we send out a public alert for a very specific neighborhood to be evacuated, and in our mapping software we shaded over the area that we wanted evacuated,” Maki told WTAQ. “There’s often slight overspread of the message, just a little bit outside of the area, but once we heard it was going out all over the county we decided to cancel it before it could spread out even further.”
The situation, Maki says, wasn’t acceptable.
“The program [we use] is a federal program, and we have a program coordinator at the state level, and we’ve contacted them to find out what the issue was,” Maki said. “To receive the message miles and miles away from the intended audience is unacceptable.”
An unlit gas stove caused the gas leak in a condemned house. Although no one was supposed to be in the home due to its unsafe living conditions, police found a 63-year-old man inside.
The man was cooperative and was later identified as the homeowner.
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