Wolf Incident Postmortem

Incident #210

Status

Complete, one action item outstanding.

Summary

Sentinel consumed by wolf after repeated false alarms.

Impact

Loss of sentinel. No flock impact.

Root causes

Sentinel generated noisy alerts due to premature deployment, incomplete training, and overly monotonous task. Oncalls failed to respond to true positive due to alert fatigue.

Trigger

Wolf.

Resolution

Gathered flock. Deployed replacement sentinel.

Detection

Sentinel did not report at end of shift.

Action Items

Priority	Action Item	Type	Status
P0	Gather flock	mitigate	complete
P0	Deploy replacement sentinel	mitigate	complete
P1	Update playbook for wolf alerts	prevent	complete
P2	Update remaining sentinels	prevent	complete
P2	Revise sentinel training program	prevent	complete
P2	Investigate equipping sentinels with flutes or slings	prevent	in progress

Lessons Learned

What went well

• Flock gathering proceeded without issues.
• No flock injuries or losses.
• Replacement sentinel did not exhibit false positive alerts.

What went wrong

• Noisy alerts not addressed.
• Alerts silenced contrary to playbook.
• Loss of sentinel.

Where we got lucky

• Only one wolf.
• Wolf sated after sentinel consumption.
• Replacement sentinel available.

Timeline

All times local

March 3rd:

• 16:32 Oncalls paged "wolf".
• 16:34 First oncall arrives at sentinel location.
• 16:34 Alert diagnosed as false positive. No corrective action performed.

March 4th:

• 14:15 Oncalls paged "wolf".
• 14:19 First oncall arrives at sentinel location.
• 14:19 Alert diagnosed as false positive. No corrective action performed.

March 5th:

• 17:03 (Reconstructed) Outage begins, sentinel notices wolf.
• 17:03 Oncalls paged "wolf".
• 17:04 Oncalls paged "wolf".
• 17:04 Oncalls paged "real wolf".
• 17:05 (Reconstructed) Wolf consumes sentinel.
• 18:45 Sentinel does not report at end of shift.
• 19:05 Primary oncall dispatched to field.
• 19:10 Oncall diagnoses issue.
• 19:10 Incident begins, secondary and tertiary oncalls paged.
• 19:15 First sheep located.
• 19:52 Last sheep located.
• 20:05 Flock safe in pens.
• 20:05 Outage ends, flock protection fully restored.
• 20:45 Replacement sentinel identified.

March 6th:

• 07:38 Replacement sentinel deployed
• 18:45 Replacement sentinel reports at end of shift
• 18:45 Incident ends, 24hr without wolf alerts or activity (exit criterion).