Ige apologizes, pledges fixes for botched missile alert
‘I am ultimately responsible’
The Maui News – Gov. David Ige apologized and pledged to Hawaii residents statewide Monday that there’d never be another false alarm like Saturday morning’s mistaken civil defense warning of an imminent ballistic missile attack that was “not a drill.”
He did not announce the firing of Hawaii Emergency Management Agency personnel responsible for the 8:07 a.m. false alarm that terrified and panicked many residents who then spent 38 minutes seeking shelter and wondering how to survive a nuclear attack.
The erroneous warning was sent during a shift change at EMA agency when someone doing a routine test hit the live alert button at the agency’s Diamond Head headquarters, state officials said.
The employee responsible has been reassigned to a job without access to the warning system amid an internal investigation. No other personnel changes were announced. There have been reports of death threats against agency employees.
“I will not stand for scapegoating of our emergency management personnel when a number of unfortunate errors caused this event,” Ige said during a statewide address. “Death threats are completely unacceptable and not how we do things here. I am governor and these good, decent emergency personnel work for me. I am ultimately responsible.”
Ige was vague about why a statewide all-clear notification took so long.
“I wish I could say there was a simple reason for why it took so long to get the correction to the false alert out,” he said. “While we got to Twitter, TV and Facebook fairly quickly, we were hamstrung by a number of factors making it difficult to get a timely cancellation out to cellphones.”
The governor said it’s clear that Saturday’s false alarm showed the need for additional safeguards and improvements to the state’s emergency notification system. Internal ballistic missile defense warning drills have been stopped until an investigation is completed, he said.
Ige appointed Brig. Gen. Kenneth Hara, the deputy adjutant general, to oversee a comprehensive review and implement needed changes immediately.
Hara also will tell everyone how to prepare and where to go if there were an attack, the governor said.
“Children going down manholes, stores closing their doors to those seeking shelter and cars driving at high speeds cannot happen again,” he said. “We will do a better job of educating the public.”
Hara was tasked with giving Ige an initial action plan within 30 days and a formal report in 60 days.
On Saturday, the state immediately began implementing improvements to emergency management, staffing and procedures, Ige said.
“Let me be clear, false notifications — and waiting for what felt like an eternity — will not happen again. You have my promise on this,” he said.
An investigation into what went wrong was underway at the Federal Communications Commission, which sets rules for wireless emergency alerts sent by local, state or federal officials to warn of the threat of hurricanes, wildfires, flash flooding and to announce searches for missing children.
The state of Hawaii “did not have reasonable safeguards or process controls in place to prevent the transmission of a false alert,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement Sunday, calling the mistake “absolutely unacceptable.”
“False alerts undermine public confidence in the alerting system and thus reduce their effectiveness during real emergencies,” he said.
With mobile phones ubiquitous, wireless alerts can quickly disseminate information to a wide number of users, but there have been concerns about creating a panic if they are sent too broadly. Hawaii residents have been jittery with fears over nuclear missile testing by North Korea.
In wrapping up his address, Ige called for working for a more peaceful world.
“We must demand de-escalation with North Korea, so sirens and warnings become a thing of the past,” he said.