From Associated Press (link):
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A National Weather Service worker inadvertently sent a tsunami warning to Alaska radio and television stations Monday as employees were reviewing procedures to issue such alerts.
Officials suspect the warning was transmitted when someone accidentally double-clicked the cancel button with their computer's mouse, said Sam Albanese, warning co-ordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service's Anchorage office.
After the cancel button is clicked once, the screen disappears. But once it goes away, the screen behind it has the transmit button in the same location as the cancel button.
Rapidly clicking the mouse twice may have unintentionally sent the tsunami warning since the computer program did not have a confirmation screen to send it, Albanese said.
"There is no confirmation when that transmit is hit, it just starts to transmit," Albanese said.
Officials have initiated procedures to make sure the error is not repeated.
"We're working with programmers to make sure there is a fail-safe put into the program so we don't transmit something inadvertently," he said.
The message, which went directly from the weather service to Alaska broadcasters, only contained a tsunami warning header. If it were a real emergency, meteorologists would have added actual text into the body of the message, outlining which areas of the state would have been covered by the warning.
The Weather Service later sent a correction.
Media outlets across the state were taken by surprise with the 8:53 a.m. warning. The weather service received phone calls from stations from Fairbanks to Juneau when the tsunami warning was not followed by any further information.
Television stations also received calls after the tsunami warning crawled across their screens.
"Every phone in the place started ringing," said Ed Bennett, assignment editor for KTUU television in Anchorage. "We had between 30 to 50 phones calls in the newsroom and an equal number at the front office in a 15 minute period."
