Tech’s alert system goes off the rails

A mislabeled button on an emergency notification panel sent an erroneous message to about 5,000 people early Friday morning saying a train had derailed on the Louisiana Tech University campus.

The message, pushed out by dispatchers at the university police department, went out just as severe thunderstorms and high winds were moving through the area.

The events leading up to the text and email notification began earlier when a shift supervisor, who was watching the approaching bad weather, told dispatchers to push out a tornado warning.

But there was no impending tornado. Tech police Assistant Chief Bill Davis said the officer had heard of possible tornado around Minden, in Webster Parish, and one around Jonesboro, in Jackson Parish, supposedly on a merging track toward Lincoln Parish.

So, at about 2:55 a.m., the officer decided to push out a tornado warning, even though the National Weather Service hadn’t issued even the lesser tornado watch.

The NWS had issued several severe thunderstorm notifications Thursday evening and repeatedly updated them though the early hours of Friday.

At 3:25 a.m., university police sent out what they thought was an “all clear.” But the pre-scripted message sent wasn’t that. Instead, it said: “There has been a train derailment on campus. Find shelter within a building and lockdown until further notice.”

The emergency notification system Tech uses has four pre-scripted buttons on its control panel: one for active shooter, one for weather emergency, one for lockdown, and originally, an all-clear.

“You just push a button and it sends (the message) out,” Davis said Friday.

After several recent train derailments across the country, Tech police administrators decided they’d change the pre-set all clear notification to a train derailment. The Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railroad track runs through the campus.

The message was changed, but not the label on the button.

“He pushed the all-clear and that triggered the train derailment (notification),” Davis said.

Most of the approximately 4,900 recipients are students, along with university faculty and staff who opt into the notification service, and some parents.

Davis began getting texts, some from Tech employees wanting to know what they could do to help.

At 3:59 a.m. a message went out to disregard the derailment notification.

“It a human error. We’ve already taken steps to remedy that,” Davis said.