If you were woken up by the blaring sound of Florida's Emergency Alert Alarm early Thursday morning, you are not alone.
The alert, which went out to millions in a text around 4:45 a.m., was sent by mistake, according to the Florida State Emergency Response Team.
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"Each month, we test #emergencyalerts on a variety of platforms. This alert was supposed to be on TV, and not disturb anyone already sleeping," the Florida Division of Emergency Management said in a tweet.
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The alert was later aired on television stations across the state, including NBC6.
Emergency management officials later clarified in a statement that the alert testing directives come from the federal government, and that the TV alerts are generally scheduled for early in the morning to minimize disruption since fewer people are watching television.
Officials also said the state had been contracting with a company called Everbridge to provide the technical coding and instructions required to push out emergency alerts.
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"Everbridge sent the wrong technical specifications for this alert – which ultimately pushed the alert over the Wireless Emergency Alert system (cellphones)," FDEM's statement read.
The agency later confirmed that they had ended their contract with Everbridge.
In a statement, Everbridge said their work with the state of Florida and FDEm dates back to 2016.
"Our system is used by cities, states, and entire countries around the world. We provide powerful technology that is used for good, and to save lives. There appears to have been an unfortunate procedural error in this monthly test that we are investigating," the statement read. "As mentioned by FDEM, we too regret the inconvenience this test caused the residents of Florida earlier this morning. We are committed to the State of Florida and to FDEM as a partner, as we are with all of our customers, to continue to improve and ensure best practices are applied."
Despite the disruption, emergency management officials encouraged people to continue to receive the alerts.
"Good government identifies errors, corrects them expediently, and holds people accountable when appropriate. The Division recognizes that this error was unacceptably disruptive and will correct it," FDEM's statement read. "Nonetheless, the Division stresses the importance of being able to receive emergency alerts as disasters can happen at any time and these alerts save lives. Please do maintain emergency alert notifications on your cellular device – we will ensure they are used appropriately henceforth."
Florida lawmakers were among the many in the state not happy with the early alert. A spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the person responsible would be "held accountable and discharged."
DeSantis later added he ordered Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Gutherie to bring "swift accountability" for the test.
State Sen. Bobby Powell, a Democrat from West Palm Beach, is asking for the state agency in charge of emergency alerts to revise its testing time slots.
“In order to prevent such a cell phone mishap again, and in an abundance of caution in the event of human error, I would ask that you consider a more humane, later morning testing time, such as 8:00 am, in place of the 4:50 am time slot?” wrote Powell in a letter to Guthrie.
Across social media, several accounts were vocal in their displeasure with the early morning disruption:
