False missile alert rattled Hawaii nerves 5 years ago
Jan. 13—Vanessa Bear can't help but still think about the day five years ago when the alert appeared on her phone : "BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
Vanessa Bear can't help but still think about the day five years ago when the alert appeared on her phone : "BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
"It's embedded in my head forever, " said Bear, an Ewa Beach resident and mother of two small boys. ""It was the scariest moment of my life, when I thought me and my family were going to die."
After the warning came across her phone at 8 :07 a.m. that Saturday, she spent a few moments unsuccessfully trying to find out more information but ended up gathering up provisions—food, water, flashlights and batteries—and her boys, then 1 and 3, and taking them to the bedroom of her Iroquois Point home.
Filled with anguish and dread, she called her husband at work in Honolulu and her mother on the mainland to say her final, tearful goodbyes.
That's when the all-clear alert came through, and she broke down sobbing.
Bear was numb the rest of the day and felt uneasy for at least a week. She had trouble working her part-time job waiting tables, and her mind kept wandering back to those moments of terror and uncertainty—as it still does sometimes to this day.
"It's a part of you, " she said. "It pops into my head all of the time."
Bear and her family were not alone in the way they felt that morning. Panic and terror struck residents and tourists alike during the 38 minutes before the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency finally retracted its alert.
It was seen in the people who parked in the Pali tunnel for shelter, in the erratic and dangerous driving reported on island roads, in the University of Hawaii students running for cover and the man who urged his child into a manhole.
The episode spread not only panic, but ultimately anger across the islands. State officials apologized and promised a full review. State and federal hearings and multiple investigations and reports criticized HI-EMA and recommended changes.
The fallout included the resignation of HI-EMA Administrator Vern Miyagi and the firing of the "button pusher, " an 11-year agency veteran who claimed he was poorly trained. Gov. David Ige took a major hit, but he rebounded with a solid reelection victory later that year.
Among the changes at HI-EMA : The ballistic missile alert program was discontinued and given over to the U.S. military's Pacific Command.
"We learned our lesson, " Maj. Gen. Ken Hara, the state adjutant general, told lawmakers last week.
Hara said the lead time for Hawaii in a missile attack, in all practicality, is only a few minutes, leaving little time for people to seek shelter. As illustrated by what happened in 2018, warning people only creates more hazards.
"So it's really not practical." he said.
For its part, HI-EMA implemented training and procedural changes in its own alert system operations, now giving warnings only for potential disasters such as hurricanes and tsunamis. The changes include :—Two people, instead of one, must approve and verify activation of the alert system, both for tests and real-world incidents.—If an erroneous alert somehow were to be triggered, the alert system now includes a pre-scripted message that could be triggered within seconds to immediately inform the public that there is no emergency.—The computer interface used in the alert and warning system has been modified to provide a much clearer separation between the test environment and real-world operations to reduce the risk of human error.
"The agency remains committed to continuous improvement in all aspects of our operations to ensure that the people of Hawai 'i and our visitors can be confident in the credibility of the information we provide about natural and human-caused hazards, and in our ability to support and coordinate action in an emergency, " HI-EMA spokesman Adam Weintraub said Thursday in a statement.
Weintraub said HI-EMA officials know that any false alert can erode public confidence in the emergency notification systems.
"The state took action—starting on the same day the false alert occurred—to prevent such an error from happening again, " he said.
Bear, the Ewa Beach woman, said the 2018 incident led her family to become better prepared in cases of emergency. The family's emergency kit includes all the recommended items, plus freeze-dried food and an extra bag of dog food.
The kit, she said, is what officials always recommend for hurricane season, "but now it means so much more because of the missile alert."------Star-Advertiser staff writer Kevin Knodell contributed to this report.
