The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency has been holding “are you ready” drills. On Friday, the day before the erroneous alert, several hundred people attended an event in Honolulu sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce in which military commanders, politicians and others discussed the threat to the islands’ population. The United States faces an especially difficult problem today, not just because of tense relations with North Korea but also because of growing fears inside the military about the cyber vulnerability of the nuclear warning system and nuclear control systems.īecause of its location, Hawaii - more than any other part of the United States - has been threatened by escalating tensions and the risks of war, and preparations have already begun there. Perry went on to speculate what might have happened if such a warning had come “during the Cuban Missile Crisis or a Mideast war?” It turned out that a training tape had been mistakenly inserted into an early-warning system computer.
“For one heart-stopping second I thought my worst nuclear nightmare had come true,” Mr. Perry, the defense secretary during the Clinton administration, recalled in his memoir, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink,” a moment in 1979 when, as an under secretary of defense, he was awakened by a watch officer who reported that his computer system was showing 200 intercontinental ballistic missiles headed to the United States. Kim’s government has promised more missile tests and threatened an atmospheric nuclear test.ĭuring the Cold War there were many false alarms. The alert came at one of the worst possible moments - when tension with North Korea has been at one of the highest points in decades, and when Mr. The false alert was a stark reminder of what happens when the old realities of the nuclear age collide with the speed - and the potential for error - inherent in the internet age. They sheltered in place for about 15 minutes, he said, during which time they had no cell signal. Gerst said, and dropped off at a concrete bunker. “All the buses stopped, and people came running out of the ranch and said, ‘Just sit still for a minute, nobody get off the bus, nobody get off the bus,’” he said.
He received the alert as they pulled up for their tour of Kualoa Ranch. Ray Gerst was vacationing on Oahu with his wife to celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary. “I drove to try to get to my kids even though I knew I probably wouldn’t make it, and I fully was visualizing what was happening while I was on the road. “We fully felt like we were about to die,” she said. “I was running through all the scenarios in my head, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to pull over to,” said Mike Staskow, a retired military captain.Īllyson Niven, who lives in Kailua-Kona, said her first instinct was to gather her family as she contemplated what she thought would be her final minutes alive. State officials said that residents here would have as little as 12 minutes to find shelter once an alert was issued. Estimates vary, but it would take a little more than half an hour for a missile launched from North Korea to reach Hawaii, traversing an arc of roughly 5,700 miles. Hawaii has been on high emotional alert - it began staging monthly air-raid drills, complete with sirens, in December - since President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, began exchanging nuclear threats. “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. The alert went out at about 8:10 a.m., lighting up phones of people still in bed, having coffee by the beach at a Waikiki resort, or up for an early surf.
#Alarm for 12 minutes full
The Federal Communications Commission announced that it had begun “a full investigation into the FALSE missile alert in Hawaii.”
A new procedure was instituted Saturday requiring two people to sign off before any such alert is sent.Īt no time, officials said, was there any indication that a nuclear attack had been launched on the United States. As a result, they said a “cancellation template” would be created to make it easier to fix mistaken alerts. State officials said that the agency and the governor began posting notices on Facebook and Twitter announcing the mistake, but that a flaw in the alert system delayed sending out a cellphone correction. “Someone clicked the wrong thing on the computer,” he said.
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