[LINK] False Alarm from Indian Tsunami Early Warning Centre

[Tom Worthington]

Thursday morning I noticed a worrying message from the Indian Tsunami 
Early Warning Centre:

	Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2018 03:29:03 +0530 ...

	IOTWMS-TSP INDIA has detected an earthquake with the following
	preliminary information:
	Magnitude  : 8.5  M
	Depth      : 10  km
	Date       : 20 JUN 2018
	Origin Time: 2154UTC ...
	... this earthquake may be capable of generating a tsunami
	affecting the Indian Ocean region."

	https://lists.unesco.org/wws/arc/tsunami-information-ioc/2018-06/msg00000.html

This was alarming because an 8.5 magnitude earthquake is extremely 
large. But then I noticed the location was given as "TEST_TEST_CENTRAL 
CHILE".

As confirmed later, this was a test message which escaped from the 
internal system, out to the public:

	Subject: [Tsunami Message - IOC] CANCELLATION MESSAGE ...

	Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2018 05:33:31 +0530

	IOTWMS TSUNAMI SERVICE PROVIDER INDIA (ITEWC)

	This is not a real event. This event was issued due to an
	operator error during an internal test...

	https://lists.unesco.org/wws/arc/tsunami-information-ioc/2018-06/msg00001.html

It took two hours to issue the correction, which is a long time.


-- 
Tom Worthington, MEd FHEA FACS CP http://www.tomw.net.au +61(0)419496150
TomW Communications Pty Ltd. PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia
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Honorary Senior Lecturer, Computer Science, Australian National 
University https://cecs.anu.edu.au/research/profile/tom-worthington