Hawaii reassigns worker who sent false missile alert

HONOLULU — The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency employee who sent out an erroneous ballistic missile warning that sent the islands into a panic over the weekend has been reassigned to a job without access to the warning system amid an internal investigation, agency spokesman Richard Rapoza said Monday.

The erroneous warning was sent Saturday during a shift change at the agency when the employee, who was doing a routine test, hit the live alert button.

No other personnel changes have been made, Rapoza said.

Officials on Monday tried to assure residents there would be no repeat false alarms. The agency changed protocols to require that two people send an alert and made it easier to cancel a false alarm — a process that took nearly 40 minutes Saturday.

An investigation into what went wrong is underway at the Federal Communications Commission, which sets rules for wireless emergency alerts sent by local, state or federal officials to warn of the threat of hurricanes, wildfires, flash flooding and to announce searches for missing children.

The state of Hawaii “did not have reasonable safeguards or process controls in place to prevent the transmission of a false alert,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement, calling the mistake “absolutely unacceptable.”

“False alerts undermine public confidence in the alerting system and thus reduce their effectiveness during real emergencies,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-HAwaii, said officials should be held accountable for the “epic failure of leadership” behind the warning. She said the nuclear threat underscored the need for Trump to meet with

Kim to work out differences without preconditions.

“The people of Hawaii are paying the price now for decades of failed leadership in this country” by setting “unrealistic preconditions,” she said. “The leaders of this country need to experience that same visceral understanding of how lives are at stake.”