State says alert error nearly ‘impossible’ here

Could what happened in Hawaii occur here?

The erroneous message on Saturday that warned of an incoming ballistic missile has put other states’ emergency-alert systems under scrutiny.

The Hawaii alert, sent by a state official to countess cellphones in the island state, would be hard to replicate in Arizona, according to a state spokesman.

“It’s very close to impossible,” said Morgan Hoaglin, a communications supervisor for the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs.

The department is responsible for preparing and coordinating Arizona’s response to disasters emergencies and recovery efforts.

“It’s very close to impossible . ... You really can’t think of it as a single button. It’s really more like different review levels and validation.” Morgan Hoaglin Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs

Hoaglin said alerts in Arizona go through a vetting process, and the department has never sent out a statewide alert before.

A high-level alert like an imminent threat to Arizona, such as a missile strike, would most likely would come from the federal government, Hoaglin said.

He said it would be hard to send out an accidental alert because of the process it takes.

There is no button that an employee could press accidentally, he said.

“You really can’t think of it as a single button,” he said. “It’s really more like different review levels and validation.”

A group of at least three people has to draft a message and decide to which medium — cellphones, TVs or radio, for example — to send it.

Once the alert is drafted, it has to be put into a computer system that has a validation process, he said. The software won’t send the message until the group has added how long the message should be active and to what area of the state it should be sent.

The department does monthly testing of alert systems, and those alerts go through the same process, he said.

In many cases, the department works with Arizona counties. Even though counties have their own alert systems, Hoaglin said, sometimes local officials need the state department’s help because their systems may be down.

On Saturday, for more than a half-hour, residents and tourists in Hawaii panicked after the dire message was sent: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

Larry Camp, a Gilbert resident, said his daughter, who lives in Hawaii with her husband, called after the message was sent out.

“It was just a very unsettling thing,” Camp told The Arizona Republic. “There was nothing I could do except tell her that I loved her.”

About 40 minutes later, the same officials who erroneously sent out the alert sent another one saying it was a false alarm.

But not before the initial message panicked a state already on edge over intense rhetoric between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, who has threatened to strike the U.S. with a missile after the American president has verbally attacked Kim.

Hawaii is about 4,600 miles from North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang.

Hawaii Gov. David Ige said the mistake was an error made by an employee who pushed the wrong button. Ige said it happened during a shift change when emergency-management employees ensured systems were properly functioning.

Hoaglin said the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs is waiting for more details of how the accident happened in Hawaii.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement shared on Twitter that the agency will conduct a “full investigation into what happened.” He said the accident was unacceptable and that, so far, the FCC has found Hawaii didn’t have protections to avoid the situation.

“Based on the information we have collected so far, it appears that the government of Hawaii did not have reasonable safeguards or process controls in place to prevent the transmission of a false alert,” Pai said.