'There really is no excuse:' Summit County explains emergency alerts with incorrect information

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — On Sunday morning in Summit Cove, residents woke up to emergency alerts that said they needed to take shelter because of a hazardous materials incident. However, what happened in their neighborhood was a shooting involving police.

There were two emergency alerts sent to all people in Summit County on the morning of July 9. The first one was sent at 7:50 a.m. alerting people in the area to shelter in place, but it did not include where or what the threat was. The second one came eight minutes later, specifying Summit Cove was the area under alert, but the message said residents were being asked to shelter in place because of hazardous materials.

A third message was issued around an hour later and canceled the shelter-in-place alert but did not correct or amend the prior messages warning of hazardous materials.

“I just got the message when I was waking up. And I was a little confused, because at first it was like, alright, close all your doors... There might be like an airborne pathogen or something like that," Kenny Finch said about when he first read the messages. “My initial reaction was like, so there's something in the air that we can't go outside?”

Finch, who lives in the Summit Cove neighborhood, quickly learned that was not the case.

“Quite honestly, there really is no excuse or no bottom line explanation for it," the Director of Emergency Management for the Summit County Sheriff's Office, Brian Bovaird, said. "When those messages went out, you know, that level of confusion and anxiety in the community is exactly what we're trying to prevent.”

Bovaird explained to Denver7 how the emergency alert system works in Summit County and what could've contributed to the problems with the messages.

“Our emergency alerts are actually activated through our 911 Center. And that's very important because important messages that are time sensitive can't be dependent on any one person," Bovaird said. “We have pre-scripted messages. So basically templates that we can go to for things like a lockdown situation, time is of the essence... The first message that went out [Sunday] morning was sent out and the template was not completely updated. And so it was incomplete, which obviously caused a lot of confusion for for everyone in the community.”

He said the county tries to reserve the use of Integrated Public Alert & Warning System (IPAWS), which will send alerts to most anyone with a cell phone in Summit County. The county intentionally sends the alerts to the entire area they serve.

"Up in the mountains, that's huge, because on any given day 80% of our population is going to be visitors from out of town," Bovaird said. “We understand that it's anxiety-producing when that tone goes off. But the reality is, if we don't send it countywide, then we can't ensure that the people whose lives are in jeopardy are actually receiving that message.”

Bovaird said it is too risky to target specific parts of the county with the alerts due to the mountains and the limited cell coverage. He also acknowledged there's a certain amount of alerts sent outside of the county, which is something he called "bleed over."

“Unfortunately, we're willing to take the negative criticism and, you know, train and work with the public who is upset and try and let them understand why, in fact, they are getting those messages. And hopefully they understand that for the limited occurrences that they do happen, why it's so important and why we send them out countywide," Bovaird said.

Bovaird said after the incorrect information in the alerts from Sunday morning, he will work with the 911 Center to see if any protocols or changes need to be updated or altered.

"It's not something that we take lightly," Bovaird said, while acknowledging the human error that's naturally part of the system. “To really understand the stress that a 911 dispatcher is going through, you really have to sit in their shoes or, you know, be in a dispatch center, especially when there's a potentially violent situation... When seconds matter in a situation like that, the angst of getting that message out is pretty high.”

The Summit Daily reports the victim in the Summit Cove shooting Sunday morning involving police was 18 years old, and that the call was related to mental health concerns. But that has not been confirmed.

Around 12 hours after the incident, the Summit County Sheriff's Office tweeted that the police investigation in Summit Cove had concluded. According to the Sheriff's Office, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will conduct the police shooting investigation, the 5th Judicial District Attorney Office will conduct a criminal investigation, and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office has been requested to conduct an internal investigation reviewing policy and procedure.

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