HARTFORD, Conn., Feb. 2 (UPI) -- A Connecticut official inadvertently entered an emergency broadcast code that sent a message to the public that Connecticut should be evacuated.
The false alarm was quickly recalled, but not before televisions across the state Tuesday showed the warning: "Civil authorities have issued an immediate evacuation order for all of Connecticut, beginning at 2:10 p.m. and ending at 3:10 p.m."
The message did not cause a mass fleeing of the state but police reported many calls from people concerned about the message, the Hartford Courant reported Wednesday.
Officials said during a regular weekly test of the emergency broadcast system a worker at the Office of Emergency Management admitted to entering the "evacuate" code rather than the "test" message. The mix-up was caused by the proximately of the text and evacuate codes on a list the worker was reading.
The worker, who was not named, will not face disciplinary action because "it was a mistake," OEM Director Kerry Flaherty told the newspaper.
