[EAS] Buggy alert origination software during Santa Barbara wildfires

[Sean Donelan]

Buggy alert origination software continues to cause problems for emergency 
managers.  In addition to spanish accents, some alert origination software 
also has problems with apostrophes, windows quotes and double quotes 
characters.

https://www.independent.com/2019/12/12/sending-the-right-message-during-a-disaster/

The first alert went out smoothly. But later in the evening, when 
evacuation order alerts were about to be sent, the entire messaging system 
froze. It turned out that when entering the Spanish version of the alert, 
the tilde over an ñ caused a massive glitch, forcing the Office of 
Emergency Management (OEM) to get tech support while the evacuation 
message remained suspended in space.

[...]

Although Everbridge can be incredibly helpful in creating a single 
platform to send out multiple messages, the system is too easy to trip, 
such as when the simple letter ñ in a Spanish message shut down the whole 
Everbridge platform. Although this was a machine error rather than a human 
one, it needs to be addressed before the next emergency hits.

[...]