False tsunami alert sent to some people in St. Mary

Some people in St. Mary Parish received a weather alert Tuesday morning that falsely stated there was a tsunami warning for the area, said Duval Arthur, parish homeland security and emergency preparedness director.

“I don’t know how we got included in that,” Arthur said.

But St. Mary wasn’t the only area to receive the false notification.

A routine National Weather Service test on Tuesday resulted in a false push notification to mobile phones about a tsunami warning, giving jolt to many residents on the East Coast, according to an Associated Press article.

A glitch meant some people received what looked like an actual warning, NWS meteorologist Hendricus Lulofs said. The National Weather Service is trying to sort what went wrong, he said in the article.

Officials said it appeared to be an issue with the popular Accuweather app. Accuweather didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment, the Associated Press reported.

KQKI 95.3 FM Sales Manager Brady Borel , who received the message on his phone, said, at first, he was “shocked and somewhat concerned.”

“But knowing a tsunami warning is usually preceded by seismic activity really made me have second thoughts,” Borel said. “It didn’t take me long to realize that it was either a hoax or false report since I only received the alert from a single source.”

Borel posted a Facebook item that named Patterson as included in the tsunami warning.

Arthur said St. Mary Parish does have a tsunami plan in its emergency operating plan. An earthquake involving an island in the Caribbean “could cause a tidal wave … or tsunami,” Arthur said.

“Louisiana being at or below sea level, we could certainly feel the pangs of that,” he said.