’WE MADE A MISTAKE’
Hawaii’s false missile alert sparked widespread panic; visiting Victorian Cedric Steele kept his cool.
HONOLULU — A false alarm that warned of a ballistic missile headed for Hawaii sent the islands into a panic Saturday, with people abandoning cars in a highway and preparing to flee their homes until officials said the cellphone alert was a mistake.
Hawaii officials 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 made a mistake,” said Vern Miyagi of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.
For nearly 40 minutes, it seemed as if the world was about to end in Hawaii, an island paradise already jittery over the threat of nuclear-tipped missiles from North Korea.
The emergency alert, which was sent to cellphones statewide just before 8:10 a.m., said: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
On the H-3 highway north of Honolulu, vehicles sat empty after drivers left them to run to a nearby tunnel, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported. Workers at a golf club huddled in a kitchen fearing the worst.
Professional golfer Colt Knost, staying at Waikiki Beach during a PGA Tour event, said “everyone was panicking” in the lobby of his hotel.
“Everyone was running around like, ‘What do we do?’ ” he said.
Victoria’s Cedric Steele, who was attending a breakfast meeting in Honolulu, said the general feeling there was “more resignation than concern. There’s nothing we can do. Let’s have another cup of coffee.”
Steele said his first instinct told him that the alert was a false alarm.
The 73-year-old philanthropist, who has been in a few tight situations before, describes himself as a fatalist and said he wasn’t worried or afraid.
“My feeling was I’ve had a good life and, if something’s going to happen, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway. I hope my family is safe in Canada,” Steele said.
Alberta politician Karen McPherson, who represents Calgary-Mackay-Nose Hill in the provincial legislature, was waiting to participate in a conference call when she received the alert.
“I grabbed my keys and made sure I had my phone. I’m here with a friend of mine so I yelled at her to get out of bed and to grab her phone and that we had to go right away,” said McPherson, who is staying in a condominium in Lahaina on the western side of Maui.
The pair headed toward the tsunami evacuation route, but noticed everyone was acting normally, prompting them to think there might have been a mistake. They drove back to the condo, checked social media and learned it had been a false alarm.
The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency sent a tweet saying there was no threat about 10 minutes after the initial alert, but that didn’t reach people not on the Twitter social media platform. A revised alert informing everyone of the “false alarm” didn’t reach cellphones until about 40 minutes later.
The incident prompted defence agencies including the Pentagon and the U.S. Pacific Command to issue the same statement, that they had “detected no ballistic missile threat to Hawaii.”
The White House said U.S. President Donald Trump, at his private club in Florida, was briefed on the false alert. White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said it “was purely a state exercise.”
Hawaii Gov. David Ige and Miyagi, the emergency management administrator, apologized for the false alert and vowed changes.