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Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake
- wmil 7y agoIt's pretty clear that the current Ontario emergency alert system doesn't have enough checks. They need to pause the whole system and add in an external approval before messages are sent out. Also everything is sent out at the "Presidential Alert Level". Presumably because someone gave the contract to their cousin.
- Crosseye_Jack 7y agoUntil the time its needed and there is a delay on sending out the message because the person(s) with the second set of auths isn't available and there is even more press about alerts to the public were delayed because of red tape in the alert system. As someone who recently sent out notifications to a ton of people by mistake (accidentality set a number of twitch streams to live instead of just testing so sending out a ton of "X just went live" notifications for a handful of channels) a simple "Are you really sure you want to do this action? It will do this..." confirmation message goes a long way without the need of a 2nd person to auth the action. Just don't do the confirmation message unless its needed to prevent training people to just click though it.
- rishirishi 7y agoPickering area -- 40 km away from Toronto. Nonetheless, training exercise that erroneously issued a provide-wide alert.
- stevehiehn 7y agoPickering is considered part of the GTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Toronto_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Toronto_Area
- retrac 7y agoThe Pickering plant is only about 3 km from the city of Toronto's border. While it was selected in the 60s as a relatively remote site, it's now a heavily urbanized area considered part of Greater Toronto.
- interestica 7y agoWhat kind of alert boundaries are there? Presumably radiation doesn't follow political boundaries.
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- SECProto 7y agoIt's strange that this article says "Toronto area" - it was sent to the entire province of Ontario.
- stevehiehn 7y agoI posted the news link to HN with this title. I now agree it's not accurate but didn't realize the scale of the alert at the time.
- jpdaigle 7y agoI'm in Gatineau, Québec and we got it too, so it even got broadcast to neighbouring provinces.
- interestica 7y agoI was wondering about this today. How granular are the 'zones' used for these alerts? Is it just by political boundary? For something like Pickering, it would be useful to have a more geographical zone -- including parts of the US. Could the alert be sent out and limited to cell towers within a selected zone? Is the current system using tower location?
- Scoundreller 7y agoThey have the ability to geotarget them, but fail at it regularly. From what I understood from spectrum auctions, Gatineau Quebec is a part of the Ottawa area, so they're probably a part of Ontario side when it comes to cell system back-end.
- timeattack 7y agoReminds me an accident which was caused in Hawaii by bad UI and following rather funny examples of how can bad UI screw things up: https://gfycat.com/blog/hawaii-missile-gifs-alert-terrible-ui/ https://gfycat.com/blog/hawaii-missile-gifs-alert-terrible-u...
- why-el 7y agoReminder to check out this amazing, heroic story of this man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
- 52-6F-62 7y agoBecause of this alert I actually learned that Ontario Power Generation and the city of Toronto offer free Potassium Iodine pills to anyone living within 50km of the reactor in case of a radiation leak: https://preparetobesafe.ca https://preparetobesafe.ca
- Scoundreller 7y ago> How many pills should I have on hand? > Each adult in the household should have 4 pills available, and each child should have two pills available. This is enough for 2 days supply. Is this enough? The radioactive half life of I-?131? is 8 days. Or is the dose so high that you won't uptake any from the environment for a while?
- chiph 7y agoPresumably you have evacuated by then. There is more info available here: https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/emerg-preparedness/about-emerg-preparedness/potassium-iodide/ki-faq.html#kiexpired https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/emerg-preparedness/about-emerg... and here, about dosing: (pdf warning) https://www.fda.gov/media/72510/download https://www.fda.gov/media/72510/download
- gpm 7y agoOr are they counting on their ability to distribute more pills within 2 days.
- Scoundreller 7y agoSeems like a strange situation to hope for the best and cut costs. Maybe I underestimate the cost of iodine. I suspect they were worried about people getting free iodine for their meth labs and nuclear safety somehow lost to that battle...
- gpm 7y agoThe initial alert happened at 7:24 aim. Between 8:06 am and 9:12 am a number of government officials, starting with the Pickering Fire Chief via CP24 [0] started announcing that the alert was sent in error. At 9:12 am we were told the alert was sent by mistake via the alert system. At 12:55 pm we were finally told that there actually was no nuclear incident, and the alert was sent by accident during training [1]. Why the hell did it take 42 minutes for any sort of public information to be broadcast after the initial alert. Why the hell did it take an additional hour and 6 minutes to realize they should send that information through the official system, instead of letting people wonder what information is accurate and what information is caused by the fog of war. Note that the same places we were told it was a mistake were previously telling us people were responding to an incident [2]. Why the hell did it take an entire 6 hours after the alert for the authorities to inform us that there hadn't actually been a nuclear accident, instead of a nuclear accident that was contained enough they didn't feel the need to alert us via emergency systems? [0] https://twitter.com/CP24/status/1216345708971929600 https://twitter.com/CP24/status/1216345708971929600 [1] https://news.ontario.ca/mcscs/en/2020/01/statement-from-the-solicitor-general.html https://news.ontario.ca/mcscs/en/2020/01/statement-from-the-... [2] https://twitter.com/CP24/status/1216337813957947393 https://twitter.com/CP24/status/1216337813957947393
- nolta 7y agoI wonder how many people are killed per alert? These alerts (usually AMBER alerts) are sent to millions of people, accompanied by a loud and startling siren. You can imagine all sorts of "one-in-a-million" events. The surgeon woken in the middle of the night, who can't get back to sleep and makes a mistake the next day. The startled roofer falling off a ladder. Etc.
- AlohaFractal 7y agoThe signal these events give off is really weak, but with enough events the question could be statistically resolved by looking for an effect on death rates. Interesting.
- nitwit005 7y agoI've been in a car when four cell phones started blaring, and it definitely startled the shit out of me. I'm sure people have crashed as a result. I fully expect to see a "killed by amber alert" news story, because it just seems inevitable.
- tenpies 7y agoNot even that, the deaths and injuries are immediate for drivers. Canada implemented this in the worst way possible so that any alert gets the highest alert setting possible (Presidential: what would normally be reserved for an imminent attack) - bypassing silence, do not disturb, and any volume or device setting. So Imagine a truck driver at 3 am being suddenly startled by the blaring alert and then scrambling to shut up the noise. This will almost certainly be one of those things that future generations will look at us and wonder "wait they did what?". Unfortunately the current dialog in Canada about this is "why do you hate children?" if you do anything but genuflect towards our AMBER alert system.
- Spooky23 7y agoHalf the truck drivers are futzing with their phone anyway, so I wouldn’t worry about an emergency broadcast causing mayhem. There’s certainly no evidence of alert induced carnage. I think that these things are annoying, and since they are controlled at the state/provincial/territorial/major metro level, there’s going to be a bell curve of competence. (With the bottom being Hawaii where a single operator with a defective control panel was able to send a incoming ballistic missile attack warning)
- GhostVII 7y agoEven if it was not a mistake, why would they send a presedential alert to the entire province just to tell them that people 10km away from the nuclear plant are in no danger? Pretty absurd, wish I could fully disable these alerts until the government is actually competently using them.
- blondin 7y agoi am not sure i understand the reactions here... why are people mad? the first message was very reasonable. it even said there is "no danger". to check with media and authorities. the second said the first was human error. if i were driving, i would stop the car, call 911 and ask if anything was going on. they would probably say no, then i would be on my way. instead there is now an investigation, and someone who is already having a very bad day for their mistake is going to get punished even harsher... should we start having trainings about these so people realize the possibility that these will become useful one day instead of getting mad?
- gpm 7y ago> if i were driving, i would stop the car, call 911 and ask if anything was going on. they would probably say no They weren't saying "no", they were saying "we have no idea". If everyone called 911, they would be totally swamped, please don't do that.
- Scoundreller 7y ago> if i were driving, i would stop the car, call 911 and ask if anything was going on. they would probably say no, then i would be on my way. 9-1-1 would've said: "We don't know either. We know as much as you do". Which would only be more concerning.
- rezgi 7y ago> call 911 and ask Calls to 911 usually take 2-5 minutes for anyone to answer in Toronto when there is nothing particular going on (not kidding you, there is a message playing in the meantime like "we'll answer soon, please hold") because the govt is so hellbent on cutting costs that the emergency lines are understaffed. So imagine what happens when everyone does that... No operators for 15 minutes for anyone. Ontario really has become a ridiculous place.
- bhouston 7y agoThis was pretty freaky.