
Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake - stevehiehn
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/01/12/emergency-alert-reports-no-abnormal-release-of-radioactivity-in-unspecified-incident-at-pickering-nuclear-generating-station.html
======
nolta
I wonder how many people are killed per alert?

These alerts (usually AMBER alerts) are sent to millions of people,
accompanied by a loud and startling siren.

You can imagine all sorts of "one-in-a-million" events. The surgeon woken in
the middle of the night, who can't get back to sleep and makes a mistake the
next day. The startled roofer falling off a ladder. Etc.

~~~
tenpies
Not even that, the deaths and injuries are immediate for drivers. Canada
implemented this in the worst way possible so that _any_ alert gets the
highest alert setting possible (Presidential: what would normally be reserved
for an imminent attack) - bypassing silence, do not disturb, and any volume or
device setting. So Imagine a truck driver at 3 am being suddenly startled by
the blaring alert and then scrambling to shut up the noise.

This will almost certainly be one of those things that future generations will
look at us and wonder "wait they did what?".

Unfortunately the current dialog in Canada about this is "why do you hate
children?" if you do anything but genuflect towards our AMBER alert system.

~~~
ghaff
In the US, I assumed most people turn AMBER alerts off on their phones. Some
people seem to get mad about people disabling them but some people get mad at
just about everything.

~~~
slimed
I highly doubt "most people" even know how to do this.

~~~
MiddleEndian
Most people I know forget about their existence but disable them as soon as
they get one on a new phone.

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wmil
It's pretty clear that the current Ontario emergency alert system doesn't have
enough checks.

They need to pause the whole system and add in an external approval before
messages are sent out.

Also everything is sent out at the "Presidential Alert Level". Presumably
because someone gave the contract to their cousin.

~~~
Crosseye_Jack
Until the time its needed and there is a delay on sending out the message
because the person(s) with the second set of auths isn't available and there
is even more press about alerts to the public were delayed because of red tape
in the alert system.

As someone who recently sent out notifications to a ton of people by mistake
(accidentality set a number of twitch streams to live instead of just testing
so sending out a ton of "X just went live" notifications for a handful of
channels) a simple "Are you really sure you want to do this action? It will do
this..." confirmation message goes a long way without the need of a 2nd person
to auth the action. Just don't do the confirmation message unless its needed
to prevent training people to just click though it.

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timeattack
Reminds me an accident which was caused in Hawaii by bad UI and following
rather funny examples of how can bad UI screw things up:
[https://gfycat.com/blog/hawaii-missile-gifs-alert-
terrible-u...](https://gfycat.com/blog/hawaii-missile-gifs-alert-terrible-ui/)

------
52-6F-62
Because of this alert I actually learned that Ontario Power Generation and the
city of Toronto offer free Potassium Iodine pills to anyone living within 50km
of the reactor in case of a radiation leak:

[https://preparetobesafe.ca](https://preparetobesafe.ca)

~~~
Scoundreller
> How many pills should I have on hand?

> Each adult in the household should have 4 pills available, and each child
> should have two pills available. This is enough for 2 days supply.

Is this enough? The radioactive half life of I-?131? is 8 days. Or is the dose
so high that you won't uptake any from the environment for a while?

~~~
gpm
Or are they counting on their ability to distribute more pills within 2 days.

~~~
Scoundreller
Seems like a strange situation to hope for the best and cut costs.

Maybe I underestimate the cost of iodine.

I suspect they were worried about people getting free iodine for their meth
labs and nuclear safety somehow lost to that battle...

------
gpm
The initial alert happened at 7:24 aim.

Between 8:06 am and 9:12 am a number of government officials, starting with
the Pickering Fire Chief via CP24 [0] started announcing that the alert was
sent in error.

At 9:12 am we were told the alert was sent by mistake via the alert system.

At 12:55 pm we were finally told that there actually was no nuclear incident,
and the alert was sent by accident during training [1].

Why the hell did it take 42 minutes for _any_ sort of public information to be
broadcast after the initial alert.

Why the hell did it take an additional hour and 6 minutes to realize they
should send that information through the official system, instead of letting
people wonder what information is accurate and what information is caused by
the fog of war. Note that the same places we were told it was a mistake were
previously telling us people were responding to an incident [2].

Why the hell did it take an entire 6 hours after the alert for the authorities
to inform us that there hadn't actually been a nuclear accident, instead of a
nuclear accident that was contained enough they didn't feel the need to alert
us via emergency systems?

[0]
[https://twitter.com/CP24/status/1216345708971929600](https://twitter.com/CP24/status/1216345708971929600)

[1] [https://news.ontario.ca/mcscs/en/2020/01/statement-from-
the-...](https://news.ontario.ca/mcscs/en/2020/01/statement-from-the-
solicitor-general.html)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/CP24/status/1216337813957947393](https://twitter.com/CP24/status/1216337813957947393)

------
GhostVII
Even if it was not a mistake, why would they send a presedential alert to the
entire province just to tell them that people 10km away from the nuclear plant
are in no danger? Pretty absurd, wish I could fully disable these alerts until
the government is actually competently using them.

~~~
blondin
i am not sure i understand the reactions here... why are people mad?

the first message was very reasonable. it even said there is "no danger". to
check with media and authorities. the second said the first was human error.

if i were driving, i would stop the car, call 911 and ask if anything was
going on. they would probably say no, then i would be on my way. instead there
is now an investigation, and someone who is already having a very bad day for
their mistake is going to get punished even harsher...

should we start having trainings about these so people realize the possibility
that these will become useful one day instead of getting mad?

~~~
gpm
> if i were driving, i would stop the car, call 911 and ask if anything was
> going on. they would probably say no

They weren't saying "no", they were saying "we have no idea". If everyone
called 911, they would be totally swamped, please don't do that.

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rishirishi
Pickering area -- 40 km away from Toronto. Nonetheless, training exercise that
erroneously issued a provide-wide alert.

~~~
SECProto
It's strange that this article says "Toronto area" \- it was sent to the
entire province of Ontario.

~~~
jpdaigle
I'm in Gatineau, Québec and we got it too, so it even got broadcast to
neighbouring provinces.

~~~
interestica
I was wondering about this today. How granular are the 'zones' used for these
alerts? Is it just by political boundary? For something like Pickering, it
would be useful to have a more geographical zone -- including parts of the US.
Could the alert be sent out and limited to cell towers within a selected zone?
Is the current system using tower location?

~~~
Scoundreller
They have the ability to geotarget them, but fail at it regularly.

From what I understood from spectrum auctions, Gatineau Quebec is a part of
the Ottawa area, so they're probably a part of Ontario side when it comes to
cell system back-end.

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why-el
Reminder to check out this amazing, heroic story of this man:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov)

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bhouston
This was pretty freaky.

