The Martin Luther King holiday was marred by a false alarm in Hawaii which reverberated throughout the United States and its territories.
The error caused panic across Hawaii Saturday after an Hawaii emergency management Agency employee accidently pushed the wrong button during a drill that simulated a nuclear ballistic missile attack, a test the state has been performing for months.
Around 8am Saturday, thousands of residents received the following message to their cell phone: “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii Seek immediate shelter This is not a drill.”
It took nearly 10 minutes for the emergency Management Agency to declare the threat false on Twitter and Facebook. And 38 minutes passed before a follow up cell phone message was sent declaring that it was a false alarm.
Hawaii Gov Davbid Ige held a press conference Saturday afternoon with emergency management officials to apologize for the slip up, explain what happened , and detail how the state planned to ensure a similar situation does not occur in the future, Ige confirmed that no hacking was involved in sending out the alert.
Emergency Management Agency Administrator Vern Miyagi sad that the employee who made the mistake felt terrible for triggering the alarm.
Miyagi apologized for the trouble and heartbreak caused by the alert.
He said, “I accept the responsibility for this, This is my team. We made a Mistake.”
Miyagi also used the opportunity to highlight the fact that if the missile threat were real, Hawaii residents would only have 12 to 15 minutes to react and find shelter.
In the territory, residents complained about the late response from the Emergency Operations Center to issuing an alert about the false missile threat.
An irate caller said with all the training that has been held here, there doesn’t see to be any improvement in the response of local authorities to real emergency situations.
