Everyone In Florida Got Woken Up At 4:45 AM By An Accidental Emergency Alert And They Started Posting Memes

welcome to Florida sign

iStockphoto / RAUL RODRIGUEZ


At approximately 4:45 AM on Thursday morning, everyone in the state of Florida received an emergency alert pushed to their smartphones.

Phones were buzzing and vibrating. I literally rocketed out of bed thinking a tornado was coming and I’d need to go wake up my 4-year-old and get him to safety. Only to discover the alert said it was just a TEST.

The alert reads “TEST – This is a TEST of the Emergency Alert System. No action is required.”

Florida emergency alert system

WFLA reported that this alert “the test alert is scheduled to occur every other month around 4:50 a.m., so prepare to wake up before the sun in the upcoming months!” Except, it was all an accident.

The state of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management messed up and this emergency alert was supposed to be on TV and not sent to 30 million smartphones. They apologized on Twitter while announcing their mistake.

The Florida Emergency Alert Was An Accident, The State Apologizes

But millions of Floridians were already awake after the accidental emergency alert and posting memes about it.

Nobody was happy about it. But hey, at least it was an accident right?

UPDATE: Someone’s getting fired

Hours later, the Florida Governor spoke about ‘swift accountability’ which sounds like someone is getting fired:

This is what the Florida emergency alert felt like for millions:

Sleep is precious:

It was the middle of the night!!

The end result here is the state of Florida just became a LOT less safe. Nearly every news outlet reporting on the emergency alert that was an ACCIDENT shared instructions on how to disable emergency alerts.

Now millions of Floridians won’t get the emergency alert next time around when it’s legitimate, all because someone somewhere made a massive mistake.

Cass Anderson BroBible headshot and avatar
Cass Anderson is the Editor-in-Chief of BroBible. Based out of Florida, he covers an array of topics including NFL, Pop Culture, Fishing News, and the Outdoors.