Combination of human error, software issues contributed to evacuation alert mistake, report says

The law enforcement agency pushed an evacuation alert intended for approximately 100 Henefer residents as the Rocky Canyon Fire crept closer to the town’s boundaries in August.

Fire response and evacuations

But the alert pinged cellphones from Salt Lake County to Uinta County, Wyoming, causing confusion about the fire’s scope and affected neighborhoods.

In a two-page preliminary report released this week, the three agencies concluded that human error, confusing software and coding issues were to blame.

“We were collaboratively looking at it because we had a couple of different angles,” said Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Skyler Talbot.

“How did the alert go out? What about the software we used to push that alert out?

It went all the way down to the environment we were working in. … We tried to get as much of a perspective, that 36,000-foot view of everything that happened here, so we could start to pick it apart.”

The operator who initially pushed the alert filled out the form incorrectly because the software displayed information out of order, according to the report.

Cause of fire under investigation

The Sheriff’s Office conducted an internal investigation into the incident with the Summit County Emergency Management Department and communications team.