At 8:07 a.m. on Saturday, Hawaiians woke to a mobile phone message that many had feared since tensions with North Korea reached a violent pitch last year: “Ballistic Missile Threat Inbound To Hawaii. Seek Immediate Shelter. This Is Not A Drill.” As multiple news agencies and state officials quickly clarified on Twitter, however, the message was a drill.
Over one million native Hawaiians and vacationing visitors received the alert, which sparked a mass panic across the eight islands. “Children going down manholes, stores closing their doors to those seeking shelter, and cars driving at high speeds cannot happen again,” Hawaii’s governor, David Ige, said in a statement later in the day. Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard described similar scenes of abandoned cars and streets. “You can only imagine the panic, the terror, the chaos and confusion that ensured,” she told George Stephanopolous on Sunday morning.
It was a lengthy 38 minutes before the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HEMA) sent out a correction specifying that the message had been an error. It took another five hours for Ige to issue an official broadcast about the early morning events, though he refused to place blame on public officials due to the complex and multifaceted feature of the error. Vern Miyagi, HEMA’s lead administrator, also took responsibility for the mistake and for the agency’s severely delayed response. “We made a mistake,” he said. “The wrong button was pushed.”
Later revelations, however, showed that the error may have been significantly more complex than a “wrong button.” On Monday, state officials released an image of the dropdown menu that triggers HEMA alerts. The panel, which also contains critical Amber Alerts, tsunami warnings, landslide road closure warnings, high surf warnings, and a variety of other statewide alerts, drew wide criticism among interface designers for its confusing layout and inconsistent language.
According to The Washington Post, the missile warning system has been in place since late November, and was developed in conjunction with the re-activation of the Hawaiian islands’ Cold War-era nuclear warning siren. Both protocols were initiated in response to growing fears of a North Korean nuclear missile attack.
On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen reported that Hawaiian officials had issued an updated alert system protocol. From now on, according to USA Today, all tests and warnings will require verification by two parties. The button to send out follow-up messages, which had not been programmed correctly, has apparently been reconfigured as well.
On Tuesday, Jan. 16, a Japanese television broadcaster also sent out a false alarm emergency text message warning citizens that North Korea had launched a missile and that citizens should take shelter to avoid the impending threat. NHK, the broadcasting station, corrected the error just five minutes later. Makoto Sasaki, an official NHK spokesperson, said that the “staff had mistakenly operated the equipment” that is used to receive and deliver news alerts.
Response to the events from North Korea was significantly less somber in tone. According to The New York Times, the state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported with exuberance that “the entire island [of Hawaii] was thrown into an utter chaos at the news that a ballistic missile was coming in.”