Rogers, Telus deny blame for June twister alert barrage

Telecom companies say they aren’t to blame for the barrage of tornado alerts Manitobans received during severe thunderstorms in early June.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced in August it would investigate the unusually high number of alerts, and called on the Pelmorex Corp., which operates the national Alert Ready system, along with telecom companies Bell, Rogers and Telus to respond to a number of questions.

They were given until last Friday to describe their possible roles in the creation, receipt, processing or distribution of alerts issued from Environment and Climate Change Canada in the midst of the June 9 storm.

Telus said in its response that it received 133 alert requests targeted to Manitoba created by Environment Canada and forwarded by Pelmorex between 2:35 p.m. June 9 and 3:29 a.m. the following day. While the majority of those messages contained identical information and were automatically suppressed, 17 were ultimately sent out as alerts in Winnipeg.

“Regarding public inquiries forwarded by Pelmorex concerning perceived over-alerting … handsets located within or traversing the Winnipeg area had the technical potential to legitimately receive up to 17 separate, unique alert notifications throughout the day from the Telus network,” reads the document filed by Telus, uploaded to the CRTC’s website and signed by Stephen Schmidt, Telus vice-president of telecom policy and chief regulatory legal council.

Rogers received about 133 alert requests from Environment Canada from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. June 9, with about a dozen being distinct alerts. Its report noted it was “the first time that (wireless service providers) have encountered a situation of this nature.”

“While Rogers is satisfied that its (wireless public alerting) platform functioned as intended on June 9 and that alerts were successfully distributed to our wireless subscribers, our investigation confirmed that the unusually high volume and frequency of alerts created an over-alerting situation that originated with the alert issuer,” reads the filing, signed by Howard Slawner, vice-president of regulatory telecom at Rogers.

A spokesperson for the CRTC said Bell’s response was received by the deadline but had not been published online yet. Pelmorex requested an extension but had submitted its responses Monday.

“We are reviewing the information received and will publish the responses on our website,” CRTC spokesperson Mirabella Salem said in an email. A spokesperson for Environment Canada said the federal body needed more time to respond.

Some Manitobans reported receiving 16 or more alerts about a tornado “in this mobile coverage area” on June 9. Some received the alerts despite not being in a community under the tornado warning. The notifications warned people to seek shelter.

After the storm passed, concerns were raised about “alert fatigue” that could result in future notifications being ignored.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.caw