False alarm: 'Emergency' alert jolts New Jersey cable TV viewers

William Westhoven, | (Morris County, N.J.) Daily Record

Show Caption Hide Caption Could a false emergency alert be sent in Arizona? An Arizona official says an erroneous emergency alert like the one sent in Hawaii that warned of an incoming ballistic missile could not happen here.

PARSIPPANY, N.J. — Cable television customers in New Jersey were startled Thursday by interruptions in their regular television programs announcing an "emergency" that turned out to be a false alarm.

The alerts in Morris County, noting "Morris" as the location without additional description or instruction, were seen by Optimum 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.

More: Hawaii’s false missile alert: A minute-by-minute look at how it happened

More: Hawaii worker who pushed button reassigned after bungled missile alert

"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.

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. pic.twitter.com/1wDfefKdn3 — Morris County NJ (@MorrisCountyNJ) January 18, 2018

"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.

"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.

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 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.

Follow William Westhoven on Twitter: @WWesthoven