Problems inherent in text messaging caused issue with all-clear notice

URBANA — A mistaken alert about a campus shooter — panicking some members of the University of Illinois community — was the result of an attempt to improve the alert system, the UI said.

It wasn’t “The War of the Worlds,” where a radio drama had listeners nationwide convinced of a Martian attack. But many people told The News-Gazette they were frightened after receiving an extremely vague alert about a shooter.

Robin Kaler, the spokeswoman for the Urbana campus, said two CITES employees were attempting to create templates for potential future problems when one sent the accidental message about 10:40 a.m.

It said “Active shooter at BUILDING NAME/INTERSECTION. Escape area if safe to do so or shield/secure your location.”
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n a later explanatory email, UI Police Chief Barbara O’Connor said the erroneous message was sent to 87,000 email addresses and cellphones.

Kaler acknowledged that the mistake was unfortunate and had upset people, but added “I would much rather receive a message than turned out not to be real, than to miss one that turned out to be true.”

She said not everyone who received the message reacted in the same way.

“The fact that the most important information — exactly where the incident was happening — were listed as ‘BUILDING/LOCATION’ were the best clues that the message was not about an actual emergency,” she added.

Some staffers and students received immediate emails from their departments saying it was a mistake.

A mass email to the UI campus sent by O’Connor said:
“

PLEASE DISREGARD THE ILLINI-ALERT MESSAGE SENT REGARDING THE ACTIVE SHOOTER ON CAMPUS! The Illini-Alert message was sent accidently (sic). We sincerely apologize for this accident.”
O’Connor said the dispatch with which the bad alert got out is in part a measure of the need for speed should a real emergency happen.

“The alert system is designed to send all messages as quickly as possible. The messages generally leave the sending server within two minutes. This design is essential for emergency communications. However, this prevented the cancellation of the erroneous alert once it was sent,” she wrote in an email.

There was about a 13-minute gap for one News-Gazette employee who also works at the UI from the alert to the all-clear.

Some off-campus members of the community said they still hadn’t seen an all-clear as of 11:37 a.m.

Kaler said the employees most affected by potential danger are those actually working on campus computers, and they received the warnings first.

“The idea is to reach 85 percent (of those on campus) within 6 minutes,” she said.
Those with illinois.edu email accounts were also among the first to get a recall of the notice.

“Our system is designed to keep people on campus informed about things happening on campus,” she said.

Those on an on-campus phone tree were the first to receive telephone calls alerting them of the error.
What Kaler said didn’t work well was a text message system that originates at the UI but goes through several telephone providers, who send out texts in large batches at a time.

“If they didn’t put the message in the first batch, it could be an hour before the batch with the text could go out,” she said.

“We were really trying hard not to depend solely on one method of reaching our community,” she said.
Also, phone lines were busy because of the extreme number of calls coming in.
The UI’s phone system providing the service, mystateusa, cost $63,000 to buy and about $2,500 a year in maintenance, Kaler said.