Virginia Tech's Text-Message Alert System Partly Failed During False Alarm

Via chronicle.com -

A report of what sounded like gunshots prompted Virginia Tech to use its text-message emergency-alert system last week for the first time, but the system failed to deliver all of the messages.

The sounds turned out to have come from nail-gun cartridges, which the campus police believe someone exploded manually by slamming a trash-bin lid on them. Echoes of the explosions were amplified because the incident occurred between two high-rise dormitories. But until officials determined the cause, the university police secured the entrances of the buildings and searched them extensively, even using a dog trained to sniff out explosives.

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Officials say that most of the new alert systems worked well. Messages were successfully sent to students, professors, and staff members via university e-mail, on LED display boards in some classrooms, and on university Web sites. But a system designed to send messages to cellphones and other mobile devices, which relies on a product from a company called 3n, failed to deliver to all of the people who had signed up for it, according to university officials.

The 3n system, which is known on the campus as VT Alerts, is designed to send warnings by text message, by voice message, or to nonuniversity e-mail accounts, depending on which method users have chosen. More than 30,000 people affiliated with Virginia Tech have signed up for VT Alerts.

"The system froze up," Lawrence G. Hincker, associate vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech, said in an interview. "We're very disappointed, and I am not happy in the slightest at this level of service." Officials at 3n issued a written statement about the failure but could not be reached for comment.

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Thomas Motter, president of Blackboard Connect, another company that makes emergency-messaging systems, said his company aims to make the system available "99.9999 percent" of the time. "Our philosophy is when it doesn't work when you need it most, then it doesn't matter what you paid for it. It was a waste," he said in an interview on Friday.

But Mr. Motter acknowledged that even when the system works, problems with cellular networks can delay or disrupt messages. For instance, if a hurricane is affecting cellphone service, alerts may not get through.

Officials at Virginia Tech plan to test their alert system soon and continue to investigate what caused last week's failure.