Your truly with our correspondent Burl in Hawaii on a less-panicky Saturday in 2015. Note the rainbow.
You’ve no doubt heard about the false alarm in Hawaii today:
For 38 harrowing minutes, residents and tourists in Hawaii were left to believe that missiles were streaming across the sky toward the Pacific island chain after an erroneous alert Saturday morning by the state’s emergency management agency.
“Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii,” warned an 8:07 a.m. message transmitted across the state’s cellphone networks. “Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.”
Only after an inexplicable delay by the state agency — during which residents scrambled to seek shelter and contact relatives — was a subsequent message sent describing the missile warning as a “false alarm.”
Not satisfied with mainland newspaper accounts, I turned to our intrepid correspondent on the scene, veteran newspaperman-turned-historian Burl Burlingame, to tell us what it was like.
Initially he responded with a text that said:
We’re OK but the neighbors have resorted to cannibalism.
Journalists are conditioned to react to incipient annihilation with gallows humor, and protocol required that I respond in kind, so I said, “Perfectly understandable, under the circumstances.” Then, with patience born of decades as an editor waiting for reporters to get off their a__es and file the actual story, I waited.
Eventually, he filed his report via Facebook Messenger. It follows:
In Hawaii, at 11:45 a.m. on the first working day of every month, sirens go off all over the state. You can hear them almost everywhere. Civil defense has them to warn of incoming missiles, but mainly because we’re a seacoast state with a low land mass that can easily be hit with a tidal wave or earthquake from almost any direction. Such natural disasters aren’t iffy; it’s just a matter of when …
So we take such alerts seriously.
The alarm clock on my phone was set for 8:10 a.m. this morning, so when it made noise I dimly perceived it as my wake-up call. Was it ever! It took a few moments to focus on incoming alerts and the top one said that missiles were incoming and it was not a drill.
Huh?
For a while, we’ve been getting practice alerts that are worded similarly — thanks, Trump! — although this one was most clear. But there were no sirens, no ancillary information being broadcast. Being an ex-journalist, I was pretty suspicious of a single phone alert with no backup.
I woke up the wife and told her to prepare to fight in Thunderdome after the imminent nuclear annihilation. She said OK and went back to sleep. Since she’s the night editor at the paper, I suspect she’s pretty busy this evening dealing with “I was there” stories.
There was some commotion in my neighborhood as folks were packing their cars. To go where?
I had an appointment at 10 a.m. to deliver a lecture and people were expecting me there, so I went. The electronic highway signs were already flashing MISSILE ATTACK WARNING IS AN ERROR / THERE IS NO THREAT and I mentally filed away the revelation that they are tied in with Civil Defense.
Many people were caught away from home and family. People dashed home or to churches. Tourists were rounded up off the beaches and sequestered in hotel lobbies. I expect there might be casualties from the panic.
No info yet on how this happened. It’s possible it was an online troll attack. People here are blaming Trump, but we’re expecting him to blame Hillary.
Good report. Short and to the point. And he didn’t speculate about anything he wasn’t sure about.
Gov. David Ige has now attributed the mess to a state employee’s errant push of a button. Yeah… I think the good folk of Hawaii are going to want a more complete answer than that…
The USS Arizona memorial stands as grim reminder that sudden attacks from the air DO happen, even in paradise.
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Our daughter summed it up as a “governmental butt-dial.”
Interesting update: The delay in correcting the alert was because the state first had to get permission from FEMA to do so. And FEMA prevaricated.
And apparently so did the Defense Department. Clearly they would be at the top of the alert system and should have immediately known of the state’s messaging – and that the military had not initiated it.
But really, is that even a useful message to send in any event? It’s not like a Tsunami warning or something. There really isn’t anything for the populace to do – unless one has a military grade bunker immediately accessible (and those people will already know of the threat).
What about the guy they interviewed on the news, after he got the message he called a Uber driver to take him to the airport to get on the next flight off the island. Those who had a clue were busy getting their lawn chairs set up to watch the upcoming event, because that’s about all they could do.
Its a wake up call to show how many people are 100% unprepared for an emergency or disaster. How many in this country have more than 3 days worth of food and water in their home? How many have cash available should power be down for whatever reason and you won’t be able to swipe your debit or credit card. How many have a back up plan for anything considered a necessity for life? I wish I could find the article describing what would happen in a large city within the first day, week, month and year of a devastating disaster in that city. If I recall correctly, looting and home invasions would begin within two or three days… and that’s just people looking for food. I’m in no means a “prepper” but I do have myself prepared for easily six months (except for gasoline) should something happen here… power goes out for a week and I’m homebound, no problem.
No, you’re a prepper. There is no need for anyone to have on hand more than a few days food and water. You know, for real issues like ice storms and hurricanes. I don’t dwell a minute on a ballistic missile attack. That’s just preposterous.
“There is no need for anyone to have on hand more than a few days food and water.”
You make that sound like it’s a bad thing. I guess now anyone with a pantry is a paranoid prepper in your opinion. Maybe you just enjoy grocery shopping more than I do, I go about once every three weeks. I’m also one of those paranoid people who has a chest freezer and buys meet by the half-beef instead of by the piece.
That can be economical…
My mom has a supply of food that would easily last her and my dad a month or two. But that’s because she loves to cook and has a full pantry.
“Gov. David Ige has now attributed the mess to a state employee’s errant push of a button. ”
I find it strange that Hawaii has a prepared message that only requires a press of a button to go out. That the employee didn’t actually type out, “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii,” “Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.”
More info — apparently the error resulted from double-clicking a mouse instead of single-clicking.