A “residual” message left over from the false Wave Cable alert that was broadcast to 3,000 Port Townsend TV’s on Feb. 20 went over the airwaves again last week.
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A “residual” message left over from the false Wave Cable alert that was broadcast to 3,000 Port Townsend TV’s on Feb. 20 went over the airwaves again last week.
Port Townsend resident Susan Fox, who witnessed what she described as the bizarre Feb. 20 broadcast, was watching TV around 1 p.m. on March 2 when another alert using the same messaging as the first came across her TV.
The message said “aight Im done now you can rest. Mr Gerde was here” [sic] above a message that described it as a regularly scheduled monthly test.
This was the same message that appeared last in the series of false alerts broadcast in February.
A Wave Broadband spokesperson Mark Peterson described the message as “residual” from the first event and said it came on during a “legitimate” emergency alert test.
Action was immediately taken to remove the message and it will not appear in the future, he said.
When asked for further clarification on who may be responsible, if they will seek criminal charges against the person, how the breach of security was possible, how many regularly scheduled alerts there are or how they are investigating the incident, the wave spokesperson officially responded with this statement:
“The EAS alert on March 2 was legitimate but had a residual message from the previous Feb. 20 event. We noticed the residual message on March 2 and changed the slate immediately. Approximately 3,000 Port Townsend Wave Broadband customers saw this message. This event was not a large scale incident and was contained to Port Townsend only.Action was taken immediately and we are working with the appropriate authorities regarding the February 20 incident. Beyond this, we can’t comment further as this involves an investigation and related activity.”
Who the “appropriate authorities” Wave Broadband is cooperating with also remain unclear.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the Jefferson County Department of Emergency Management and the Port Townsend Police Department have all stated they are not involved in the investigation.
A request for comment from the Federal Communication Commission—the federal regulatory agency in charge of radio, television, wire, satellite and cable—was unanswered by press time.
