Many of Portugal’s citizens and foreign residents, living in the southern part of the country, were impressed today to receive a SMS message from the National Civil Protection Authority warning of extreme risk of rural fires in the Beja and Faro districts.
Telecommunications regulator, ANACOM, has been working with mobile phone network operators, and radios and TV stations, to get the message across that the extreme heat could turn a small fire into a life-threatening catastrophe.
The helpful warning included a telephone number that recipients were encouraged to use should they have any doubts or questions.
One small problem had crept into the otherwise flawless emergency communication system: the number included in the SMS was for a windscreen repair company, Glassdrive, whose marketing department at first may have been delighted at the free publicity but later, helpline staff spent hours this morning persuading callers that it was not the Civil Protection Authority and that 808 246 246 was its customer enquiry line - and nobody else's.
Finally, Glassdrive gave up and callers received a message "Can not complete the call" and promptly were cut off.
The number that should have been issued was 800 246 246, so a second SMS message was sent to a bewildered nation several hours later, under the heading ‘Rectification’ with the same message about Beja and Faro and an altered help line number, not than anyone would have noticed as the single digit error was hard to spot.
The technology worked but, as so often, human error made a mockery of the whole exercise.
