False Missile Alert in Hawaii

On January 13, 2018, a false missile alert was issued via the Emergency Alert System and Commercial Mobile Alert System over television, radio, and cellphones in the U.S. state of Hawaii. The alert stated that there was a ballistic missile threat to Hawaii, advised residents to seek shelter, and stated "this is not a drill". The message was sent at 8:07 a.m. HST. Almost 40 minutes later, a second message was sent describing the first as a "false alarm". State officials later blamed a button pushed in error during a shift change at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency for the false first message.

Governor David Ige publicly apologized for the erroneous alert, which caused panic and disruptions throughout the state. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the Hawaii House of Representatives immediately announced investigations into the incident.

Background

Escalating tensions between North Korea and the U.S. government, including threats by both countries that they could use nuclear weapons against one another, prompted a heightened state of readiness in Hawaii. The state is believed to be within range of North Korea's missile capability; a missile launched from North Korea would leave Hawaii residents 12 to 20 minutes to prepare once the alarm sounds. North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun claimed in July 2017 that North Korea possessed the capability to strike either Hawaii or the U.S. state of Alaska. The threat from North Korea was the topic of a conference at the Hawaii State Capitol on January 12, the day before the false alert was sent.

In December 2017, a nuclear threat siren was tested in Hawaii for the first time in more than 30 years. Vern Miyagi, administrator of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, explained that state leaders "couldn’t ignore these constant threats and missile tests from North Korea" and felt the need to prepare residents for the possibility of an attack. Officials also outlined what would happen if an emergency alert were sent: a push alert to smartphones and a message interrupting television and radio broadcasts.

Earlier in January 2018, U.S. Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai said the commission planned to vote to overhaul the wireless emergency alert system. Recode reported that Pai's proposed reforms were intended to narrow down the number of people who received alerts, confining emergency notifications to a more specific geographic area, to prevent mass panic and reduce incidences of people switching off their device's ability to receive emergency alerts.

Incident

People in Hawaii reported seeing the alert at about 8:07 a.m. HST on their smartphones. Many screenshots of the push alert were shared on social media platforms, such as Twitter. The alert read, in all capital letters:

"BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."

Local television broadcasts, including a college basketball game between Florida and Ole Miss being shown on CBS and a Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Everton on NBC, were also interrupted by a similar alert message. The alert message on television broadcasts took the form of both an audio message and a scrolling banner. It stated in part:

"If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in a building. Remain indoors well away from windows. If you are driving, pull safely to the side of the road and seek shelter in a nearby building or lie on the floor. We will announce when the threat has ended."

An alert message also interrupted radio broadcasts in the state. In Lihue, a resident reported hearing a message on the radio advising of "an incoming missile warning for the islands of Kauai and Hawaii".

Vern Miyagi, the administrator of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, later said the alert had been inadvertently triggered by an agency employee during a shift change. He said the emergency message was sent after the employee, whose name was not released, clicked the wrong button while running a test of the state's ballistic missile preparations and then clicked through a second screen, which had been intended as a safeguard, to confirm.

State Response

By 8:10 a.m. HST, officials later said, Hawaii National Guard Adjutant General Arthur "Joe" Logan had contacted U.S. Pacific Command and confirmed there had been no missile launch. At that time, the Honolulu Police Department was notified that the alert had been a false alarm. Officials used the State Warning Point system at 8:13 a.m. to cancel the alert, preventing it from being sent out to any phones that had not already received it, such as those that were switched off or did not have reception.

Official messages refuting the emergency alert were not sent out until 8:20 a.m., according to the timeline released by officials after the incident. Hawaii Emergency Management Agency accounts on Facebook and Twitter posted messages at that time urging people to disregard the erroneous alert. Governor David Ige retweeted the HEMA message on Twitter and posted a similar message on Facebook minutes later to notify followers that the alert had been canceled. An email from the state was also sent about 25 minutes after the first alert advising that it was not correct.

Second alert

At 8:45 a.m. HST, 38 minutes after the initial alert was sent to smartphones in Hawaii, a second emergency alert was sent. The message described the first message as a "false alarm" and stated:

"There is no missile threat or danger to the State of Hawaii."

The second alert was sent "well after everyone from Hawaii’s congressional delegation to the U.S. Pacific Command had assured the world on Twitter that it was a false alarm", Pacific Business News remarked.

Governor David Ige explained at a news conference that afternoon that officials "had to initiate a manual process" and obtain authorization from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in order to send the second alert, because there was no automated way to cancel the first alert. Those procedures accounted for the delay more than 30 minutes after officials had confirmed internally that the alert was inaccurate, according to officials.

Impact and Related Panicking

During the 38 minutes between the first and second alerts, Hawaii's siren warning system — which had been tested as part of a missile preparedness exercise the previous month for the first time since the Cold War — was not activated. Little to no activity was reported at military bases in the state. Some commercial flights were reportedly delayed for a short time, although the Hawaii Department of Transportation said there were no widespread impacts at the state's airports and harbors.

Disruptions were reported across the state. Honolulu Civil Beat reported that motorists parked inside the Interstate H-3 tunnel on the island of Oahu for shelter. Hawaii News Now reported that alarms sounded at Aloha Gymfest, an international gymnastics meet in Kailua, sending hundreds of people running for cover. Officials at the Sony Open PGA Tour golf tournament on Oahu ordered an evacuation of the media center, while staff members sought cover in the kitchen and players' locker room. Tourists at Kualoa Ranch in Kaneohe were reportedly taken up to a concrete bunker in the mountains by staff and told to shelter in place there. Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa later said her husband had been driving on a Honolulu-area freeway and saw cars speeding at up to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) after the alert was sent out. Many Hawaii residents and visitors sought shelter or rushed through emergency preparations where they were. Others observed that there were no sirens, or that there was no immediate coverage on televisions or local radio.

The incident also created a strain on Hawaii's telephone system. Civil Defense offices in Hawaii were inundated with calls from frightened residents asking for advice or more information, the New Zealand Herald reported. Many calls to 9-1-1 would not go through. Many wireless data services were likewise initially jammed, leaving many unable to access the Internet to confirm whether the alarm was real. Some residents called friends or family members to say goodbye.

Responses to the Alert

Twitter posts and screenshots of text messages shared on social media in the immediate wake of the first alert conveyed confusion, alarm, and fear among those who received the warning.

Federal officials:  Members of Hawaii's congressional delegation also took to Twitter to dispel the false alarm. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard tweeted at 8:19 a.m. HST, about 12 minutes after the initial alert was sent, stating in all capitals that the message was a "false alarm" and that she had confirmed with officials that there was no incoming ballistic missile toward Hawaii. Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa, a 2018 candidate for governor, later tweeted that the "panic and fear created by this false alarm was very dangerous". Hanabusa panned the delay between the two emergency alerts, suggesting it should not have taken 38 minutes for the second message to be sent. Senator Mazie Hirono tweeted that officials "need to get to the bottom of what happened and make sure it never happens again". In his own tweets, Senator Brian Schatz described the false alarm as "totally inexcusable", adding,

"The whole state was terrified. There needs to be tough and quick accountability and a fixed process."

Commander David Benham, a spokesman for U.S. Pacific Command, confirmed to media that there was no imminent missile threat to Hawaii. A spokesman for North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) stated that "NORAD did not see anything that indicated any sort of threat to Hawaii" and said NORAD and U.S. Northern Command were still verifying what had happened. A White House official said the alert had been part of "a state exercise" and President Donald Trump was briefed on the situation. Trump ordered National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster to take charge of the administration's response to the incident.

Ajit Pai, chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, announced the commission would launch a full investigation into the false alert.

Gabbard stated in an interview after the second emergency alert was sent that the incident was "a taste of the stark reality of what we face here of a potential nuclear strike on Hawaii", referring to the possibility of a North Korean attack

State officials:  Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell also tweeted that the message had been a false alarm, saying the message had been sent in error, before the second alert was sent out by the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.

Hawaii Emergency Management Agency administrator Vern Miyagi took responsibility for the incident. Miyagi described the initial warning as a "mistake", saying it "should have been caught" before the alert was sent out. A Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesman initially said the agency was running a drill at the time, although he noted that standard drills do not involve the sending of an emergency alert. He said the incident was being investigated but initial indications suggested it was "a technical issue". HEMA officials, including Miyagi, said there was no evidence that the agency's systems had been hacked to send the false emergency message.

Miyagi apologized for the false alert, as did Governor David Ige, who called the incident "unfortunate and regrettable". They said officials would review the state's procedures to prevent it from happening again. Ige said:

"I know first-hand how today's false alarm affected all of us here in Hawaii, and I am sorry for the pain and confusion it caused. I, too, am extremely upset about this and am doing everything I can do to immediately improve our emergency management systems, procedures and staffing."

Hawaii Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English said he was "outraged" by the error, which caused unnecessary "panic and pandemonium" throughout the state. Hawaii House of Representatives Speaker Scott K. Saiki announced the House would investigate the incident:

"This system we have been told to rely upon failed and failed miserably today. I am deeply troubled by this misstep that could have had dire consequences. Measures must be taken to avoid further incidents that caused wholesale alarm and chaos today. Clearly, government agencies are not prepared and lack the capacity to deal with emergency situations. Apparently, the wrong button was pushed and it took over 30 minutes for a correction to be announced. Parents and children panicked during those 30 minutes. The Hawaii House of Representatives will immediately investigate what happened and there be consequences. This cannot happen again."

The deputy adjutant of the Hawaii National Guard said that notwithstanding the erroneous alert, people should continue to follow instructions and take shelter if another alert is sent in the future.

Aftermath

State officials held a news conference in the afternoon of January 13 to address the incident. Hawaii Emergency Management Agency head Vern Miyagi said the agency had suspended tests while assessing what had happened. He also announced it had immediately changed its procedures to require two people, instead of just one, to send out both test alerts and actual alerts. The agency also moved quickly to implement a cancellation command that officials said can be triggered within seconds of an erroneous alert being sent out, which it reportedly lacked before the January 13 incident.

A formal report is expected to be issued later in the month.

                          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_missile_alert

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See also

On February 1, 2005, the Emergency Alert System was activated in portions of Connecticut calling for the immediate evacuation of the entire state. The activation was in error. Later studies showed that residents did not evacuate, and that the most common response was to 'change the channel' or seek other confirmation.  More details at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Alert_System_misactivation_of_2005