VERY TSuPID!
Big-wave alert to East Coast was meant only as test
FATIGUE AND transit agencies’ failure to monitor their workers for sleep apnea caused two train accidents in the New York area, federal investigators said Tuesday.
The National Transportation Safety Board issued a report finding that the probable cause of the two commuter rail crashes — at Hoboken Terminal and Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn — was chronic fatigue from undiagnosed severe sleep apnea.
NJ Transit and Long Island Rail Road were also faulted for their sleep apnea screening processes.
The board found that NJ Transit failed to follow its own testing guidelines, while LIRR did not launch a sleep apnea testing program before the crash.
Representatives for NJ Transit and LIRR said safety is a top priority and touted their agencies’ testing procedures.
NJ Transit has been checking for the disorder since 2005. The MTA launched program for Metro-North in 2015, and the rest of the MTA in January 2017, following an LIRR crash in Brooklyn. WHICH WEATHERFOLKS are to blame for this scary forecast?
A bogus tsunami warning issued Tuesday morning created a flood of confusion along the East Coast — and left AccuWeather and the National Weather Service trying to dodge the fallout from the meteorological mess.
The weather service sent out a routine message marked “TEST” around 8:30 a.m., with AccuWeather’s system automatically relaying the warning as phones pinged from Florida to Maine.
“The National Tsunami Warning Center did NOT issue a tsunami warning, watch, or advisory for any part of the United States or Canada this morning,” came the followup weather service message.
But AccuWeather put the blame on them anyway, alleging that the test message was wrongly coded as a legitimate warning.
“Tsunami warnings are especially time-sensitive given the fact that people may have only minutes to react to a tsunami threat,” said AccuWeather Vice President Jonathan Porter.
“As such, we process them with the utmost concern and deliver them promptly and automatically as soon as they’re received by the government.”
The weather service said it was looking into what happened, but said nothing about the alleged coding issues.
Though initially terrifying, the tsunami snafu become comedic fodder for Twitter.
“Did that False Alarm guy from Hawaii get a new job? #TsunamiWarning,” joked one tweeter, invoking the Jan. 13 false missile alarm fiasco in the Aloha State.
NBC Connecticut meteorologist Bob Maxon mentioned Wall Street in his tweet: “Did the crashing stock market create a wave? Doubt it.”
Maine resident Jeremy DaRoss — who lives along the coastline in Portland — said the water visible from his house looked a little different after the alert appeared on his phone.
“Looking out the window and seeing the ocean puts you in a different frame of mind when you get a tsunami warning,” said DaRoss.
His moment of panic passed quickly as a click on the push notification revealed the warning was only a test.