By Maddy Vitale
When people on the East Coast started their day Tuesday, a tsunami was probably not one of their concerns.
And then around 8:30 a.m., users of the AccuWeather App got a real wakeup call. Tsunami warnings went out to people via phones and other mobile devices on the East Coast, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.
It was a test by the National Tsunami Warning Center, which is part of the National Weather Service. It was released, according to the National Weather Service, “by at least one private sector company,” but would not say the company, according to a release on the National Weather Service website.
“We are currently looking into why the test message was distributed,” the release said.
The tsunami warning didn’t exactly cause a ripple effect of fear in Somers Point. SPPD Captain Robert Somers said the department was aware of the alert, but did not receive any calls from the public about it.
AccuWeather, a private forecasting company, is putting the blame for the false alarm on the National Weather Service. The NWS is investigating how a test could go out as the real thing.
The National Weather Service issued a statement Tuesday morning saying, “Some users may have received notifications that a tsunami warning is in effect for their area. There are no tsunami warnings in effect at the current time. Again, there are no tsunami warnings in effect.”
