Tacoma Fire addresses error with shelter-in-place alerts

TACOMA, Wash. - A gas leak occurred at a Tacoma construction site on Wednesday morning, prompting an emergency alert on resident's phones. However, it turns out that more people than necessary received the alert.

The leak was reported around 9 a.m. at S 4th Street and L Street, near the construction site of the new Mary Bridge Children's Hospital.

The site is also within a close radius of other hospitals, like MultiCare Tacoma and Tacoma General, a daycare and parking garages.

The emergency alert sent to phones read: "Public Safety Alert | Tacoma Fire Department: Broken gas pipeline in the area. Hazmat team is monitoring air quality. Temporarily shelter in place unless told otherwise."

According to Tacoma Fire, the alert was meant for those within a quarter-mile radius of the leak site.

However, it appears the alert went out to more people than intended, likely causing confusion and alarm for those unaware of what the circumstances were and where the alert was based out of.

One person on Facebook reported that they got the alert in Fife.

"We are now aware that the alert went far beyond the intended radius and we are currently looking into what caused that to happen so we can avoid this in the future," said the Tacoma Fire Department on Facebook. "We acknowledge that this error has had an impact on a large number of residents, organizations and businesses, and for that, we sincerely apologize. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through our processes to ensure this does not occur again."

A screenshot of the alerts sent out by Tacoma Fire.

The department also sent out a notification minutes later stating that the incident was resolved and that the temporary shelter-in-place was lifted.

"We currently do not know if that message was received by everyone and are working with the system administrators to determine this," TPD said in response to one comment on their Facebook post about the follow-up message.

Several people noted on the fire department's Facebook page that they would rather be notified erroneously than not at all; that it was better to be "safe than sorry" and thanked Tacoma Fire for their work.

To the criticism on the same post, the department replied to one person with: "We appreciate the criticism. We can and will do better."