Glitch sends flood of false alarms to subscribers of Cork flood alert system

Tue, 07 Feb, 2017 - 18:15

Residents in Bandon, Co Cork, have been inundated with inaccurate flooding text alerts because of a computer glitch in an early warning system today.

One person got nearly 250 flooding text alerts this afternoon from the Bandon Flood Early Warning System run by the council.

Cork County Council have confirmed that "a technical fault" has resulted in subscribers getting hundreds of false alarms.

Current system error with the Bandon FEWS website & working to resolve the issue. FEWS Forecast is Green with little rain forecast Apologies
— Cork County Council (@Corkcoco) February 7, 2017

The council said: "The current FEWS Forecast is Green with little rain forecast for the coming week."

Cork County Council are having an issue with the Bandon FEWS system and SMS service. Multiple texts being sent... https://t.co/GuRswCwoDy
— Cork Safety Alerts (@CorkSafetyAlert) February 7, 2017

The website for the Bandon Flood Early Warning System is currently down, but the messages have thankfully stopped.

Cork County Council said: "Due to a technical fault in the Bandon Flood Early Warning System, the system has inadvertently been issuing a number of inaccurate text alerts to subscribers.

"Cork County Council wishes to advise that it is a systems fault. Subscribers are advised to ignore the content of the messages. Cork County Council has taken immediate steps to try to identify the source of the fault giving rise to these erroneous messages.

"The Council has published clarifications on its website, various social media platforms, and also to the media advising that this is a systems fault and that the inaccurate text alerts should be disregarded.

"Cork County Council regrets this incident and is working hard to resolve it. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused."

Some users took to Twitter to alert people about the false alarms.

@Corkcoco the Bandon flood warning texts are broken..... pic.twitter.com/cT0YeH6VMZ
— Bríd Murphy (@BridMurphy) February 7, 2017

@Corkcoco The Bandon FEWS alert system appears to be having a major glitch. 17 SMS messages in the last 7 minutes.
— Conor O'Neill (@conoro) February 7, 2017