An error by the Emergency Alert System caused an evacuation warning to be broadcast to all of Los Angeles County on television on Wednesday evening, causing temporary panic and lingering hilarity.
Fox News reported:
An immediate evacuation notice from the Emergency Alert System that interrupted regular TV programming in the Los Angeles area Wednesday, telling the entirety of L.A. County and the “Eastern North Pacific Ocean” area to evacuate due to a fire was sent in “error” by Los Angeles County, the Ventura County Sheriff said.
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The Office of Emergency Management said in a statement to Fox News Digital: “The National Weather Service (NWS) Los Angeles/Oxnard transmitted a Non-Weather Emergency Message (NWEM) via National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrator (NOAA) Weather Radio on behalf of the County of Los Angeles per the request of Los Angeles County Fire officials to support Evacuation notifications related to the Route Fire, a brush fire in the Castaic area.”
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The alert was connected to the Route Fire in Castaic, California, in northwestern Los Angeles County, which quickly grew to more than 4,000 acres by Wednesday evening amid triple-digit temperatures and forced legitimate mandatory evacuations in the area.
In January 2018, a false alarm warning Hawaii residents of an incoming ballistic missile strike — in the midst of escalating nuclear tensions with North Korea — caused residents to panic; some fled to shelters. The fault was due to a state emergency warning system.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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