Emergency false alarm
Some calls to Auckland Council were diverted to an emergency evacuation message on Wednesday morning despite there being no emergency.
A message sent out by the council on Twitter said there was no emergency and it was working to resolve the error as soon as possible.
When Stuff phoned the call centre, a worker answered.
They said they were not aware of the error.
Auckland Council later sent another message on Twitter saying it was experiencing issues with its phone system which may affect wait times. This was quickly followed by a message saying that the issue had been resolved.
Auckland Council’s contact centres manager Wendell Wylde said the issue was due to technical problems.
‘‘Our engineers are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,’’ he said.
‘‘We would like to reassure our customers that there is no emergency and that we will resolve their enquiries as quickly as possible.
‘‘There may be slight delays and we apologise for any inconvenience caused. We hope to get the [system] fully operational as quickly as possible.’’
Earlier this year, a wave of panic was sparked in Hawaii after the wrong button was pushed on the United States emergency text alert system, issuing a false alarm.