The alert landed at 06:42, telling people in 16 cities and counties to move to shelters immediately. Taiwan’s National Alert Office said the message was meant for two eastern districts under a heavy-rain advisory, but an outdated all-island recipient list was selected during a routine dispatch.
The warning was withdrawn 19 minutes later. By then, officials had logged 1,140 calls from residents seeking shelter information and 74 bus diversions, while seven county and city leaders were preparing a response that quickly turned into a political challenge to Taipei.
A warning sent island-wide
The alert office said a staff member was preparing a targeted notice for Yilan and Hualien, where intense rain was forecast, when the older distribution list remained active. The office’s deputy director, Lawrence Osinski, said the dispatch system showed the selection but did not require a second official to confirm its geographic reach.
“The message was wrong, and the safeguard that should have caught it was missing,” Osinski said at a briefing in Taipei. He said no serious weather threat had been reported in the other areas reached by the alert, and that the office would publish a technical review within 30 days.
At 11:20, seven local executives announced the Local Safety Accord, a cross-party grouping whose members govern districts representing about 8.9 million people. They want a second authorization before any alert covers more than one county, plus a public map showing exactly where each warning is sent.
Local chiefs demand a veto
Shoba Ding-Neo, a county executive and the accord’s convenor, said the group would seek a formal vote in the national legislature next week. “A warning that reaches millions cannot depend on one hurried click in a central office,” she said, calling the false message “a failure of authority, not just a clerical slip.”
The accord also proposed NT$2.1 billion (about €58 million) in new spending over three years for regional alert controls and staff training. Its members come from three competing parties, and two had previously backed central-government plans to standardise emergency messages.
The cabinet said it would consider the second-authorization rule but rejected a local veto over national alerts, arguing that a slow approval chain could cost precious minutes during a real emergency. Elsa Martinelli-Bruno, an emergency-planning adviser who reviewed the dispatch timeline for a county government, said the fix need not delay urgent warnings: “The system can ask another person to confirm the map, not the wording.”
The pact’s leaders said they would publish their proposed safeguards by Monday and hold a public hearing in Taichung next month. For residents who received Thursday’s message, the immediate consequence was confusion; for Taipei, the bigger test is whether a mistaken warning can force a lasting shift in who controls the next one.
