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A few minutes ago, phones across Hawaii received the above emergency alert about a "ballistic missile threat inbound," but according to state officials it isn't true. US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii's [governor] David Ige and the state's Hawaii Emergency Management Agency all chimed in on Twitter to confirm the alert is false. It took 38 minutes before a second alert reached phones, confirming that the first one was a mistake.
Honolulu police confirmed in a post that "State Warning Point has issued a Missile Alert in ERROR!," while Buzzfeed reporter Amber Jamieson tweets that one EMA employee said it was a part of a drill. US Senator from Hawaii Brian Schatz said the "inexcusable" alert "was a false alarm based on a human error" while the National Weather Service called it a "test message."
The governor said on CNN that "It was a mistake made during a standard procedure at the change over of a shift, and an employee pushed the wrong button."
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/13/hawaii-missile-eas/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday January 14 2018, @10:47PM (2 children)
Because Trump's dick waving contests with the leaders of North Korea have again brought us to this point?
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday January 15 2018, @02:51AM (1 child)
What does someone pressing a button at a shift change have to do with North Korea?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @03:28AM
Well, you see, the Cold War is over. INCOMING BALLISTIC MISSILE! Where do you suppose it would be coming from? New Zealand? Iraq? Tahiti? China? Burma? No, there was only one plausible source of an attack, and that is what caused it to be a plausible warning, and it is only Trump's precedency that has made it so. In fact Hawaii has only re-instated some of it's cold war Emergency Messaging system because of Tromp's policy toward North Korea.
(I guess it could have been one of ours, with a malfunctioning guidance system, possibly launched from a sub, or Alaska. But the basic rule of friendly fire is that it is not, and the second is that it almost never is anticipated. )