False alarms: 9-1-1 tech ‘glitches’ led to a pair of untrue warnings of a fire at Bend’s new Costco
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Central Oregon users of a popular website and smartphone app to track the latest fires, crashes and other emergencies were alerted twice in 24 hours to a reported structure fire at a large local store - but it turned out to be a pair of tech hiccups, nothing more.
The alerts were sent by PulsePoint Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon, indicating several Bend Fire units and Redmond Fire as well were called out to a structure fire at the new Bend Costco on the city's north end. In the first case, the "incident" finally showed as being cleared about 12 hours later.
But in both cases, quiet police scanners and no reports of smoke columns or fire sightings in the area were a clue that something was amiss.
When KTVZ News inquired about what happened, Deschutes County 9-1-1 Operations Manager Chris Perry gave us the answer.
"9-1-1 staff are conducting training exercises ahead of fire season, using the test environment of our dispatch software," Perry told us. "The test environment usually doesn’t have access to the outside world and allows us to simulate different training scenarios internally."
"Unfortunately, there have been a few glitches with system settings during our training, which we've now resolved," Perry said late Wednesday afternoon.
