Hawaii’s State government has explained, in a timeline [PDF] that the message was sent as part of a “routine internal test” at 8.05 AM on Saturday, January 13th. That’s when he got an emergency text message telling him a ballistic missile was set to hit the state.
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The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency’s administrator, Vern Miyagi, said he took responsibility for the mistake.
At the time, there was no template that allowed the EMA to promptly send a follow-up message informing recipients that the alert had been a false alarm.
Although a retraction message was sent out half an hour later claiming the threat had been a mistake, the 73-year-old singer was left “frightened” by the momentary panic which ensued.
Comedian and actor Jim Carrey was one of thousands who woke up to the terrifying message, as was National Basketball Association legend Magic Johnson.
Officials’ initial explanation was an employee had “pushed the wrong button”.
The worker who accidentally sent over a million people into panic in Hawaii with a false missile warning will not be fired, but reassigned. “There is no incoming missile to Hawaii”, read a tweet from congressional Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. “We also must ensure that corrections are issued immediately in the event that a false alert does go out”. Alaska and Hawaii are the U.S. states closest to the country.
He also said he’s been working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, elected officials and state emergency management officials to figure out what went wrong.
This is a false alarm. During a test last month, it was reported that 93% of them worked properly, although some could hardly be heard and 12 mistakenly played the ambulance siren. “Apparently not very often, but if it had the locals scared then you can imagine what it was like for us”, said Hudson. Gen. Joe Logan confirmed that there was no missile launch.
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Ige previously had said “we definitely need to improve our procedures”, after confirming a staff member had during a shift change.
