Emergency Centre sends all-clear notice to wrong Finnish region

Yle reported that Finland’s Emergency Response Centre Agency mistakenly sent an all-clear notice to the wrong region on Thursday, cancelling a dangerous smoke warning in Päijät-Häme instead of Kanta-Häme.

An energy-waste pile caught fire in Janakkala, in Kanta-Häme, producing large amounts of smoke. Authorities issued a warning about hazardous smoke in the Tervakoski area, which the agency relayed to Yle and other outlets.

Shortly before noon, the rescue service determined that the smoke no longer posed a danger and that the warning could be cancelled. The all-clear notice was mistakenly issued for Päijät-Häme rather than Kanta-Häme.

Yle corrected the information on its website about an hour later, after clarifying the matter with the Emergency Response Centre Agency.

Mika Taavitsainen, head of the agency’s operations centre, said the error was caused by a typing mistake. When a warning or all-clear notice is issued, the agency must specify both the region and the precise address covered by the notice.

“This was a straightforward error during the cancellation. Päijät-Häme was entered as the region, even though it should have been Kanta-Häme,” Taavitsainen said.

Danger warnings are issued about 50 times a year, but Taavitsainen said similar typing errors occur less often than once a year.

He said the 112 Suomi mobile application received the information correctly because warnings are cancelled separately in the app.

“It is a very important tool. Through it, authorities can inform citizens that a danger is under way,” Taavitsainen said.

The effectiveness of danger warnings was widely discussed in the spring after authorities issued a drone warning across Uusimaa in response to the possibility of drones straying from a Ukrainian strike against Russia. The Interior Ministry said at the time that it would accelerate a technical reform allowing warnings to be sent directly to mobile phones in danger zones.