Ohio Emergency Management Agency officials were trying to determine why a ''civil emergency'' message mistakenly aired on cable and broadcast stations in 19 Ohio counties during an Amber Alert.

The Amber Alert was issued Sunday night in Tuscarawas County because two sisters, 7 and 8, were reported missing in Dover. The girls were found outside Uhrichsville. Thomas Thornton, 35, of Uhrichsville, was arrested on two counts of kidnapping. He is scheduled to appear today in court.

The civil emergency message that was activated instead of an Amber Alert is normally used for ''a disaster scenario that may not be specific to weather,'' said Mark Patchen, director of technical support at the Ohio EMA and also the statewide Amber Alert Committee chairman.

During an actual ''civil emergency,'' a television message explains the nature of the crisis and tells the public what to do, Patchen said.

An emergency dispatcher's focus during an Amber Alert ''is to get the information out as quickly as you can,'' he said.

On Sunday night, TV viewers saw a scroll appear on the screen announcing a civil emergency. Then a female dispatcher's voice read the Amber Alert information from Tuscarawas.

It was the 100th Amber Alert since Ohio adopted the system in 2002.

State officials were trying to determine whether the mistake was made by the Tuscarawas County Sheriff's Office, which issued the alert, or the State Operations Center Joint Dispatch Facility from the Columbus Communications Center of the Ohio Highway Patrol, which oversees such alerts.

The message was issued in three regions of the state, Patchen said, including several counties south of Tuscarawas, because there was a concern that was where the girls were taken.

The counties where the message was broadcast were Summit, Portage, Wayne, Stark, Holmes, Tuscarawas, Carroll, Coshocton, Belmont, Harrison, Jefferson, Guernsey, Noble, Monroe, Morgan, Washington, Athens, Meigs and Gallia, Patchen said.

Patchen said he understands that the suspect in the case heard the Amber Alert before his arrest.

''We want to find the cause and prevent it from happening again,'' he said. ''This is something we don't like to see happen.''

The Amber Alert and civil emergency messages are automatically broadcast on cable systems and television and radio stations, said Heidi Mock, director of media relations for Time Warner Cable in Akron.

''We are the network that provides the information, we don't create the information,'' she said.

Time Warner, she said, maintains the equipment, but does not issue the alerts.