{"id":1315681,"date":"2019-10-15T17:52:52","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T23:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/?p=989340"},"modified":"2019-10-15T17:52:52","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T23:52:52","slug":"how-garfield-countys-shelter-in-place-alert-went-to-7800-people-instead-of-56","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/how-garfield-countys-shelter-in-place-alert-went-to-7800-people-instead-of-56\/","title":{"rendered":"How Garfield County\u2019s \u2018shelter in place\u2019 alert went to 7,800 people instead of 56"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
A security alert on a mobile phone. Garfield County sends emergency alerts by text message to those who sign up online. <\/strong>
Getty Images<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

At 9:55 p.m. Sunday, thousands of Garfield County residents received an electronic message urging them to \u201cshelter in place for police presence in the area.\u201d<\/p>\n

The alert included no further information, meaning folks as far apart as Silt, Rifle, Carbondale and Glenwood Springs were all left to wonder what was going on \u2013 and where.<\/p>\n

Finally at 10:30 p.m. another emergency alert clarified: \u201cDisregard shelter in place message,\u201d and said the message was only valid for a specific area in Battlement Mesa.<\/p>\n

The problem occurred when technicians at the Garfield County
\nEmergency Communication Authority (GCECA) selected the wrong format for the
\nalert.<\/p>\n

The initial alert should have applied to only 56 people in
\nBattlement Mesa, but instead went to 7,800 people who signed up for traffic
\nalerts online, according to GCECA executive director Carl Stephens.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a template for road closures, and it looks like they used that,\u201d Stephens said.<\/p>\n

Even if the technicians had limited the alert to the specific geographical region, protocol dictates that the message should have included a location of the incident, Stephens said.<\/p>\n

To avoid situations like Sunday evening\u2019s mistaken alert,
\nStephens said the staff will go through additional training on the system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to redo training with everybody,\u201d Stephens said.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s incident<\/a> involved a standoff between Garfield County sheriff\u2019s deputies and a man who threatened to shoot himself.<\/p>\n

The man\u2019s gun discharged during the hours-long standoff, and
\nlaw enforcement wanted to alert the neighbors in Battlement to stay indoors for
\ntheir safety, sheriff\u2019s office spokesman Walt Stowe said Sunday.<\/p>\n

The suspect in the standoff was successfully apprehended and is being held in the Garfield County Jail.<\/p>\n

Such alerts are important, but \u201cwe don\u2019t send them all county-wide, because that can create panic, or cause people to show up to see what\u2019s going on. We try to send it just to the people involved,\u201d Stephens said.<\/p>\n

Opting In<\/h4>\n

GCECA has more than 16,000 landline numbers listed in their system \u2013 data they get from telecommunications companies.<\/p>\n

Not everyone has a landline, so the GCECA also has an online form at Garco911.com<\/a> for people to sign up for crime alerts, road closures, fire alerts and air quality announcements.<\/p>\n

The alerts can be sent by text message and email. Sometimes GCECA makes calls to landlines as well.<\/p>\n

Those who sign up can enter addresses for work and home, so
\nthat messages to cell phones can be targeted to where a person is likely to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do send road closures, but we also help people know what\u2019s going on in their community \u2013 if there\u2019s a standoff or something like that,\u201d Stephens said.<\/p>\n

Member agencies, like fire departments and law enforcement, provide the information to communicate and request the alert as needed. The alert system has been used, with various updates, for about 10 years, Stephens said.<\/p>\n

Ideally, \u201cyou\u2019re not going to get every alert if it doesn\u2019t
\naffect you,\u201d Stephens said.<\/p>\n

The Sunday night mistake was the first time a
\nlocation-specific law enforcement alert went out so broadly, according to
\nStephens.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t send out a whole lot of those, luckily because of the community we live in, but when we have, there hasn\u2019t been an issue like this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

tphippen@postindependent.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A security alert on a mobile phone. Garfield County sends emergency alerts by text message to those who sign up online. Getty Images At 9:55 p.m. Sunday, thousands of Garfield County residents received an electronic message urging them to \u201cshelter in place for police presence in the area.\u201d The alert included no further information, meaning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 18:34:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}