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False Alarm: Emergency Alert in Hawaii Claimed "Missile Inbound"

posted by takyon on Sunday January 14 2018, @09:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the oopsday dept.

Fnord666 writes:

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/

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  • (Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday January 15 2018, @01:55PM

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Monday January 15 2018, @01:55PM (#622564)

    Based on the information I gathered -

    There's a confirmation screen on sending the warning. The user was doing a routine test of the system and had intended to use its built-in testing mechanism. The confirmation screen doesn't specify whether it is sending a live warning or a test warning. The style of live/test mode was only displayed on an earlier screen. The user flipped through that screen without noticing they were in live mode and hit confirm.
    * So there's a design issue (it's not forced upon the user that it's in live warning mode vs. testing mode in a way the user can't disregard)
    * And a training issue (the user was being hasty/careless)

    There was a delay after the message was sent before a call to action to "withdraw" the warning - the user did not realize his mistake until his own cell phone buzzed the warning.

    The system had no plan B. They had to improvise a mechanism to send out the notification that the first one was false. This scenario wasn't anticipated by the creators of the system.

    Honestly that they got another message out in less than 40 minutes is not the worst, considering the mess they created...

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