Denver tornado alarms sounded by mistake when official "skipped" protocols, officials say

Denver emergency officials say they are working to rebuild public trust after a mistaken tornado siren activation Monday became the third improper emergency alert issued in the city this year.

The Denver Office of Emergency Management said the city's outdoor warning sirens were activated by mistake, even though there was no tornado warning in effect.

For Denver residents like Marisa Saturni-Johnson, the sirens were alarming enough to send her family into shelter.

"I was like, oh, that's one of our tornado sirens going off," Saturni-Johnson said. "It, I mean, very well could have been, or a tornado coming our way."

She gathered her family and headed to the basement.

"The chickens in here, my husband and I were in here with the two dogs, because we thought this would be the safest place," she said.

The family remained there for nearly an hour before learning the activation had been a mistake.

"And then we come to find out that this was for nothing, and the relief that came over first was wonderful. Okay, we're not actually in danger, that's great. But then after that, we're thinking, well, why is this happening?" Saturni-Johnson said.

The Denver Office of Emergency Management admitted they made a mistake.

"What happened yesterday, it was out of the ordinary," said Loa Esquionin Garcia with the Office of Emergency Management.

While a tornado watch was in effect across parts of the area on Monday, there was no tornado warning issued. According to emergency management officials, a Denver Fire Department employee manually activated the sirens after receiving a non-emergency 911 call reporting an unconfirmed tornado.

"What we had was a very well-intended staff member. He was looking out for the safety of our residents who activated the sirens manually, and by doing it manually, he skipped some protocols we have in place," Esquionin Garcia said.

Officials said those protocols include verifying reports of a tornado before activating the city's warning system. The Office of Emergency Management says they are now reviewing the incident and evaluating whether additional training is needed.

"We look at what went wrong, what we can do better, what we can do to build the trust again of our residents, so we are looking at those things as a holistic approach for alert and warning as a program," Esquionin Garcia said.

The mistaken siren activation marks the third improper emergency alert in Denver this year and the second attributed to human error.

In January, city officials attempted to send a shelter-in-place alert to people within a two-block area, but a software issue caused the message to be distributed citywide. Then, in April, a city official reportedly accidentally sent a public safety alert to the entire city following a reported robbery.

Following those incidents, public safety officials said they updated software and added training to prevent alerts from reaching more people than intended.

Now, officials say they are again reviewing procedures after the alarms on Monday went off when they weren't supposed to.

The Office of Emergency Management says it is taking responsibility for the error and working to ensure it does not happen again. The Office of Emergency Management also reports that those with access to the alarm system include their office, Denver International Airport, and a special team at the Denver Fire Department. Esquionin Garcia says multiple points of access are intentional to allow for quick responses in real emergencies. However, after Monday's inadvertent alarm, the office is looking at that policy.

Officials also emphasized that Denver's tornado warning system is tied to National Weather Service alerts. If a tornado warning is issued, residents should expect multiple notifications, including both outdoor warning sirens and emergency alerts sent directly to their cell phones.

For Saturni-Johnson, these repeated errors leave her unsure of what to trust in the future.

"The trust is gone right now, that's what's hard," she said, "I am fearful that after seven, 10, 15 of these happening, we're not going to take it seriously enough, and then what are we going to do when it actually is an emergency that we need to be responding to?"

CBS Colorado has reached out to the Denver Fire Department but has not yet heard back.