The Civil Defence director has told Kiwis woken up by three emergency test alerts sent to their smartphones this morning that she's "so sorry" for the technical error.
The loud alarms beginning around 1.30am woke up many, who took out their frustrations on social media.
The Civil Defence loud alarms woke up many unnecessarily. (Source: Other)
Director Sarah Stuart-Black says the alert was an "error" and should not have been sent out to the New Zealand public.
She says a European provider was testing the Civil Defence's new alert system when an unknown error on their end occurred.
"This is really unfortunate and unacceptable and I take full responsibility and apologise to every person who was woken by these messages."
Sarah Stuart-Black has apologised for early-morning text messages being sent out, and says it was completely unacceptable. (Source: Other)
Ms Stuart-Black told TVNZ 1's Breakfast programme that three messages were sent out to mainly Vodafone users across the country. It's unknown how many people received the messages.
Civil Defence communications manager Anthony Firth told 1 NEWS he was also woken up at an "inconvenient hour" and that they're working with service providers to try and get to the bottom of it.
"We certainly will be ensuring that testing during the night stops," he says.
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