So it sounds like the better part of Los Angeles got an emergency test alert on their cell phones from the fine people of Monterey Park.Once our phone stopped shrieking, we put in a call just to make sure Monterey Park and its denizens are okay. We asked a woman in the city clerk's office whether the city sends out emergency alerts. Normally it does go through the city, she said, but the city manager put out a call to the fire chief to find out exactly what's going on.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department told KTLA it doesn't have a clue what's going on but denied responsibility: "It wasn't us. I don't know who sent it. We're still looking into it."
The alert went out with a loud buzzing noise, reminiscent of the time the CHP put out an alert for kidnapping suspect James Lee DiMaggio who had made off with 16-year-old Hannah Anderson. That alert went out late at night, which greatly annoyed a lot of people. There were fierce debates then about whether that alert was worth—and worries that too many people would opt out of the system. We're guessing a false alarm like this isn't helping to make the case for the emergency alert system.
In the meantime, here's a map letting you know where Monterey Park is just in case you forgot (or never knew):
Thanks, Google Maps
Update 3:20 p.m.: We checked in with the Monterey Park Fire Department, and they're fessing up to sending out the alert to the entire county. Yvette Becker, a clerk with the fire department, told LAist, "We have a new alert system. We are testing it. It was not intended to go out of the city." We got confused for a minute because, previously, Sgt. Richard Pena of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department told LA Weekly it had been them. But a Sheriff's Department spokesman corrected the record:
LAist writer Jean Trinh contributed to this post.
