If you live in Florida and you have a smartphone, you're probably feeling pretty tired at this point in your day:
Florida authorities apologized Thursday after millions of state residents were abruptly awoken in the early morning by a loud emergency alert on their phones.
At around 4:45 a.m., Floridians with smartphones received an alert that read, "TEST – This is a TEST of the Emergency Alert System. NO action is required." The alert was accompanied by a loud alarm that is used for Amber Alerts or hurricane warnings.
Waking up at 4:45 in the morning to the blearing, hideous sounds of an emergency alert like:
Seriously. Quarter of five is a rough time to wake up on any day of the week. It's even rougher when it's your phone that wakes you up. It's rougher still when it's your phone waking you up with the unearthly, haunting screech of an emergency tone. That sort of thing makes you think the nuke's about to drop.
So what on Earth inspired the Florida government to send this thing out? Well, it turns out this wasn't supposed to got o anyone's phone at all:
This alert was supposed to be on TV, and not disturb anyone already sleeping.
Ahh yeah. Someone clicked the wrong box on EmergencyAlert.exe, that's all.
Well, whoever that guy was, he's gonna have plenty of time to update his résumé:
"This morning's 4:45AM SERT test alert was not appropriate and not done at our direction. The party responsible will be held accountable and appropriately discharged," DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin said.
