"An emergency alert announced on TV and radio stations in Illinois this morning appears to be the result of a human error in Washington, D.C. "Apparently, there's some kind of test being run that shouldn't be going out," Lawrence said. "(IEMA) is getting besieged with phone calls from all over...

"All television channels, including Channel 2 in Chicago, posted an emergency bulletin for District of Columbia and although you could see the news, you could not hear it," viewer Jan Hergesheimer wrote to CBS 2 Tuesday morning. "(It) was pretty scary for about 20 minutes."