Hawaii's paradisiacal atmosphere turned into a nightmare Saturday morning as residents received a text alert warning them of an inbound missile headed towards the state.
"Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill," the push alert read. Ten minutes later, The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency tweeted that it was a false alarm. However, it took an additional 28 minutes before the emergency management team sent out a follow-up push alert to correct the mistake, according to The Associated Press.
In the meantime, Hawaiians were sent into a panic because they thought the last days were upon them.
It turns out that all of their panicking was due to human error. Hawaii Governor David Ige told CNN that an employee "pushed the wrong button" during a "procedure that occurs at the change of shift." Hawaii's emergency administrator, Vern Miyagi, took the blame for the error and added they'll "take action to prevent this from ever happening again" by having more than one person during a shift and administering equipment changes.
However, that may not be enough. Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, tweeted that the FCC will launch a "full investigation" into the incident.
Both Hawaii U.S. Senators criticized the emergency management for their grave error. Senator Brian Schatz called the false alarm was "totally inexcusable" and later added that "there needs to be tough and quick accountability and a fixed process." Hawaii State Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English said in a statement that he's "outraged that a mistake of this magnitude occurred."
The Pentagon and the U.S. Pacific Command have since issued a statement saying that they "detected no ballistic missile threat to Hawaii." On the other hand, The White House's statement was a bit fishy. After noting that Donald Trump, who's currently golfing in Florida, was briefed on the situation while golfing in Florida, White House spokesperson Lindsay Walters said that the push alert "was purely a state exercise."
