False missile scare hits close to home
SOUTHERN ALBERTA RESIDENTS CAUGHT UP IN HAWAII MISSILE MISTAKE
By Sunday, the incident was already turned into a souvenir T-shirt that read “Emergency alert ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. Just kidding. Maui Hawaii.” Chelsea Mereska bought one. But just 48 hours earlier, the matter was anything but a laughing one. To say the Lethbridge resident’s vacation to Hawaii didn’t go exactly as planned is an understatement.
Mereska has been in Maui with her boyfriend, Travis Vander Heyden, and his family from Picture Butte since Jan. 6. The group of 15 from southern Alberta were there on Saturday when a false incoming ballistic missile emergency alert was sent from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency system.
“We were pretty panicked; at that moment, everyone thought it was real,” Mereska said on a call to The Herald Monday afternoon.
“We got warnings to our cellphones and through the radio.”
Four members of the group, including Mereska, left their hotel at 7 a.m. on Saturday for a day-trip on Maui’s scenic Road to Hana.
The emergency alert was sent to cellphones statewide just before 8:10 a.m. saying: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
The Associated Press has reported that Hawaii officials have apologized repeatedly and said the alert was sent when someone hit the wrong button during a shift change. They vowed to ensure it would never happen again.
“We were in the middle of nowhere,” Mereska recalled. “We barely had cell reception to call the family back at the hotel. I think we were trying to stay calm because we thought there would be a little bit more direction.”
They finally did get through to the family members back at the hotel, who in turn told the road trip group the hotel was in “utter panic in the lobby by the staff and the guests. Sirens were going off.”
“We were lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to be where it was just us,” Mereska said.
“I immediately went on Twitter just to see if there was any more information from the Hawaii police. Then we turned around and drove to the closest building. We saw a bunch of other people pulled over, on their phones also trying to figure out what to do. Then it was about 30 minutes after we got the first notification, that it was a false alarm. First of all, we thought ‘thank goodness.’ Second, we hoped whoever did that was fired.”
About 10 minutes after the original alert, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency tweeted there was no threat. But some people didn’t get a revised alert of the “false alarm” until almost 40 minutes later.
Once they saw it, Mereska and group carried on with their original day trip — while also answering several phone calls and texts from family members back home wondering if they were OK.
The group is set to return home to Alberta tonight.
On Sunday, they bought the Tshirts, and on Monday, they enjoyed their final full day of their Hawaii trip — which will now be remembered as the missile false alarm trip.
“We’ve had a lot of fun, but that’s probably the biggest memory — I wouldn’t say the best — but the biggest we will all have,” Mereska said. “That 30 minutes was enough to never forget.”
Follow @NKuhlHerald on Twitter