False alarm: 'Emergency' alert jolt Morris cable TV viewers

Optimum cable customers in Morris County were startled Thursday by blue-screen interruptions in their regular television programs announcing an "emergency" that turned out to be a false alarm.

The alerts, noting "Morris" as the location without additional description or instruction, were seen by viewers during the late morning and early afternoon, appearing intermittently on multiple channels.

"We apologize for the confusion caused when we were conducting a routine emergency alert system test in the Morris County, New Jersey area," Altice USA/Optimum spokesperson Lindsey Angioletti said. "Our technical teams are conducting an investigation to ensure this doesn't happen again."

Five days after residents of Hawaii were jolted by warnings of incoming ballistic missiles via mobile-device alerts, some Morris County residents were able to clear the blue-screen TV alerts by turning their cable boxes off and on. But after a few minutes, the blue screens would return.

There was no wording on the screen to indicate it was a test.

"I couldn't get it off my TV no matter how many times I shut my box on and off," said Ellen Giordano of Montville, who saw the alerts at 12:30 p.m. "I had to do a hard boot of the box for it to go away."

The alerts in Hawaii appeared on mobile-communication devices. No alerts in Morris County were reported being seen on any platform other than Optimum cable television 

Scott DiGiralomo, emergency management coordinator and director of the Morris County Department of Law and Public Safety, said his office was investigating the incident after receiving calls from the public.

"Obviously there was no emergency," he said. "We have no control over that. We called the state they didn't know anything about it. They assured us there was no emergency. We're really not sure why that went out. There was no message other than the blue-screen emergency alert and music behind it."

After their initial investigation, Morris County authorities took to social media to assure the public there was no imminent danger.

"THERE IS NO EMERGENCY OCCURRING IN MORRIS COUNTY: Please disregard an emergency message being broadcast by Optimum," the county posted on its official Twitter account.

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"It was almost like something tripped the signal, but there was no message behind it," DiGiralomo said. "We understand that's disconcerting to the public when you see that, especially with what just happened in Hawaii. That's not something we can control, but we are talking with both Optimum and the state police to see if they can figure out what triggered that."

Like the Hawaii Office of Emergency Management, which blamed human error for Saturday's false alarm in Hawaii, the New Jersey State Police Office of Emergency Management is enabled to activate alerts in New Jersey through the nationwide Emergency Alert System.

"But the State OEM doesn't have anything in their logs about an alert, and they're going to work with Optimum to try and find why that was on for that amount of time," DiGiralomo said.

DiGiralomo said the automated EAS uses the cable feed as a "pass-through" for a signal that "gets sent though one of the agencies that would activate the emergency alert."

"Normally, there would be words coming across the screen with what action you should take," he said. "If there was a flash flood in the area, for example, there would be information about the flood. If there was a major chemical spill, there would be information about that."

But no other information was ever listed, according to multiple viewers.

The only other common content in each instance was soft instrumental jazz music playing in the background.

"That's all we kept hearing, there was music in the background," DiGiralomo said.

The FCC regulates the EAS, a national public warning system that requires broadcasters, cable television systems, wireless cable systems, radio providers and direct-broadcast satellite providers to provide the communications capability to the president to address the American public during a national emergency.

The FCC, in conjunction with Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Weather Service, implements the EAS at the federal level.

The system also may be used by state and local authorities to deliver important emergency information such as AMBER alerts and weather information targeted to specific areas.

Staff Writer William Westhoven: 973-917-9242; wwesthoven@GannettNJ.com.