MISSILE ALERT SENDS ISLANDS INTO PANIC
It was a terror-stricken 38 minutes for tens of thousands of people in Hawaii who received a horrifying warning on their cellphones, TVs and radios suggesting their worst fears had become reality — a ballistic missile was on its way.
“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL,” the alert screamed from cellphones across the islands.
Longtime residents and vacationers were suddenly jolted into survival mode, hurrying to shelters with scant information and sending loved ones a final goodbye.
The 8 a.m. alert woke many people from their sleep, including Alyssa Chaparro, a 22-yearold who lives on Oahu with her family.
“I jumped up and started closing all the windows. I woke my mom up. She said, ‘What was that?’ I said, ‘There’s a missile coming,’ ” Chaparro told the Herald.
She started filling trash bags with water and closing more windows. Her grandmother called, crying, to say she loved them.
“It was pretty much chaos,” Chaparro said. “We were all just panicking.”
Thirty-eight long minutes later, the Hawaiian Emergency Management Agency sent an update saying the alert was made in error.
Gov. David Ige, himself awakened by the alert, told reporters the doomsday alert was caused by human error during a shift change at the emergency agency.
“An employee pushed the wrong button,” Ige said.
The head of Hawaii’s emergency agency, Vern Miyagi, said the mistake was regrettable and insisted it wouldn’t happen again “because the criticality of time with this type of event and the credibility of this alarm going out is critical for us saving lives.”
In Oahu, Chaparro said she was in “disbelief over how long it took to tell us it was a false alarm” and said the chaos and panic prove the state isn’t ready for a real attack.
“We are so not prepared,” she said. “We need, the state needs, to have a meeting that tells us what to do in a situation like this when it’s real.”
Lynnette Hull, a 19-year-old from Nevada vacationing in Maui with her family, said the mistake triggered widespread panic.
“We all just spoke about how it was weird there was no official news about the alarm,” Hull said. “We are and all are still very angry about it. It makes no sense that this was an error. It someone truly only pressed the incorrect button, then the system must be messed up.”
While the cellphone alerts caught many by surprise, the islands recently resumed testing of Cold War-era missile warning sirens in response to North Korea’s ballistic missile capabilities amid escalations with the U.S. The missile alarms wail out each month when they are tested after the regular tsunami warning sirens.
Estimates differ on the exact timing, but a missile launched from North Korea could hit Honolulu in about 30 minutes.
The White House said President Trump was briefed on the alert but dismissed it as “purely a state exercise.”
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the agency is “launching a full investigation” into the false alarm. U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii called for the alert system to be suspended until “we can be 100 percent confident in its reliability.”