Portland mistakenly sends out alert to 5 counties

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – The Portland Bureau of Emergency Communications mistakenly sent out a televised emergency alert Monday that warned of a nonexistent 911 outage.

Agency spokesman Todd DeWeese told the Oregonian/OregonLive that the 911 service was testing the emergency alert system when the alert was somehow broadcast to residents in Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah and Washington counties in Oregon and Clark County in Washington.

He says everything was done correctly in practice mode but for some reason it didn’t stay that way.

The message written in English and Spanish appeared around 4:15 p.m. It said the outage was scheduled to last from 4:02 p.m. to 4:32 p.m.

DeWeese said there were no issues with the 911 system.

The system will be examined to determine what caused the malfunction.

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Information from: The Oregonian/OregonLive, http://www.oregonlive.com