On the morning of January 13, 2018, an alert was accidentally issued via the Emergency Alert System and Wireless Emergency Alert System over television, radio, and cellular networks in the U.S. state of Hawaii, instructing citizens to seek shelter due to an incoming ballistic missile. The message was sent at 8:08 a.m. local time and the state had not authorized civil defense outdoor warning sirens to sound.
Occurring during the 2017–2018 North Korea crisis, the alert was widely interpreted as a nuclear attack launched from North Korea. In a subsequent survey, 28% of respondents initially believed the alert, 45% were unsure, and 27% did not believe it. Of all respondents, 27% did not check any other sources following the alert. Some residents, not hearing sirens or seeing widespread media coverage, discounted the alert. Others found apparent confirmation in their area's activated sirens and local TV stations that had received the alert. According to the study, "the urge to call loved ones interfered with the practical need to shelter", frantic driving was common, and the "broader social contract was, in that extreme situation, at least to some degree, put into abeyance in favor of the closest social sphere".
38 minutes and 13 seconds later, state officials blamed a miscommunication during a drill at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency for the first message. Governor David Ige apologized for the erroneous alert. The Federal Communications Commission and the Hawaii House of Representatives launched investigations into the incident, leading to the resignation of the state's emergency management administrator.
Background
Escalating tensions between North Korea and the United States, including threats by both countries to use nuclear weapons against one another, prompted a heightened state of readiness in Hawaii. North Korea had conducted several intercontinental ballistic missile tests over the past year, most recently in November 2017, enhancing its strike capabilities. North Korea may have had the capability to deliver nuclear missiles to Hawaii at the time, and because Hawaii is located roughly 4,600 miles (7,400 km) from North Korea, a missile launch would have left approximately 12 to 15 minutes of warning time.
Hawaii officials had been working for some time to refresh the state's emergency plans in case of a nuclear attack from North Korea. An October 2017 email from the University of Hawaii to students with the subject line "In the event of a nuclear attack", containing instructions from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency on how to react in case of a nuclear attack, caused controversy; a university spokesman ultimately apologized for "any needless concern it may have caused". Testing of the civil defense warning sirens and attack drills were also conducted in the state on the first business day of December 2017.
On December 1, 2017, a nuclear threat siren was tested in Hawaii for the first time in more than 30 years, the first of what state officials said would be monthly drills. At 11:45 a.m. on January 2, 2018, the state conducted its monthly test of the civil defense outdoor warning siren system including the sounding of a one-minute Attention Alert Signal (Steady Tone) followed by a one-minute Attack Warning Signal (Wailing Tone). There was no exercise or drill accompanying the test. Prior to January 13, 2018, 26 drills had been conducted. Vern Miyagi, the administrator of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, explained that state leaders "couldn't ignore these constant threats and missile tests from North Korea" and felt the need to prepare residents for the possibility of an attack. Officials also outlined what would happen if an emergency alert were sent: a push alert to smartphones and a message interrupting television and radio broadcasts.
Earlier in January 2018, U.S. Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai said the commission planned to vote to overhaul the wireless emergency alert system. The proposed reforms included providing more detailed information in alerts and confining emergency notifications to a more specific geographic area. Pai hoped that the reforms, which would take effect if approved by the FCC, would lead to greater use of the alert system in local emergency situations and prompt people to take alerts they receive more seriously.
Incident
The alert
The alert was sent on the 13th of January, 2018 at 8:08 a.m. Hawaii–Aleutian Standard Time. People in Hawaii reported seeing the alert on their smartphones. Many screenshots of the push alert were shared on social media platforms, such as Twitter. The alert read, in all capital letters:
BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
Local television broadcasts, including a college basketball game between Florida and Ole Miss being shown on CBS affiliate KGMB and a Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Everton on NBC affiliate KHNL, were also interrupted by a similar alert message, broadcast as a Civil Danger Warning. The alert message on television broadcasts took the form of both an audio message and a scrolling banner. It stated in part:
The U.S. Pacific Command has detected a missile threat to Hawaii. A missile may impact on land or sea within minutes. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. If you are indoors, stay indoors. If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in a building. Remain indoors well away from windows. If you are driving, pull safely to the side of the road and seek shelter in a building or lay on the floor. We will announce when the threat has ended. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Take immediate action measures.
The alert message also interrupted radio broadcasts in the state. In Lihue, a resident reported hearing a message on the radio advising of "an incoming missile warning for the islands of Kauai and Hawaii".
Culpability for the false alert was attributed to an employee at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, who officials said was a 10-year agency veteran who had previously exhibited behavior that had troubled coworkers, according to The Washington Post. Vern Miyagi, then-administrator of HI-EMA, said the alert had been inadvertently triggered by the employee as he was working at the Diamond Head Crater headquarters during a shift change. During the shift change, a supervisor ran an unscheduled drill in which he contacted emergency management workers in the guise of an officer from U.S. Pacific Command, according to state officials. The supervisor deviated from the script, officials said, erroneously stating at one point, "This is not a drill", although he reportedly did state before and after the message, "Exercise, exercise, exercise", agency code to indicate a test rather than an actual emergency.
Officials said that upon hearing the supervisor's statement, the employee, who had "confused real-life events and drills" at least twice before believed there was an actual emergency, and he later attested to this in a written statement. In an interview with NBC News, the employee shared that he was "100 percent sure that it was the right decision and that it was real". The man went on to state that he is not to blame for the incident, that overall it was a system failure, and that he did exactly what he was trained to do. He clicked the button to send out an actual notification on Hawaii's emergency alert interface during what was intended to be a test of the state's ballistic missile preparations computer program and then clicked through a second screen, which had been intended as a safeguard, to confirm.
An agency spokesman told The Washington Post that the employee was prompted to choose between the options "test missile alert" and "missile alert" and had selected the latter, initiating the alert sent out across the state. The employee later claimed to the Associated Press that he had not heard the "exercise" part of the phone call because a co-worker had placed it on speakerphone partway into the message, and as a result, he had been "100 percent sure" the attack was real. State officials said five other workers were present at the agency at the time and all of them recognized the phone call as an impromptu drill. Since this incident, the employee responsible has received numerous death threats and has expressed his apologies on multiple occasions.
State response
By 8:10 a.m. HST, two minutes after the first alert, Hawaii National Guard Adjutant General Arthur "Joe" Logan had contacted U.S. Pacific Command and confirmed there had been no missile launch. At that time, the Honolulu Police Department was notified that the alert had been a false alarm. Officials used the State Warning Point system at 8:13 a.m. to cancel the alert, preventing it from being sent out to any phones that had not already received it, such as those that were switched off or did not have reception. The employee who originally sent out the erroneous notification did not respond when directed to cancel the alert, according to state officials. He later said he felt like he had been dealt a "body blow" upon realizing the supposed attack had been a drill, the Associated Press reported. Another unidentified worker grabbed the employee's computer mouse and canceled the alert when the first employee failed to respond.
Official messages refuting the emergency alert were not sent out until 8:20 a.m., according to the timeline released by officials after the incident. Hawaii Emergency Management Agency accounts on Facebook and Twitter posted messages at that time urging people to disregard the erroneous alert. Minutes later, Governor David Ige retweeted the HI-EMA message on Twitter and posted a similar message on Facebook to notify followers that the alert had been canceled. Ige later said the delay was caused in part by the fact he did not know his Twitter login information. An email from the state was also sent at about 8:25 a.m. advising that the initial alert was not correct, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.
Electronic highway signs were also used to spread the word that the alert had been issued "in error" and that there was no threat to Hawaii.
Second alert
At 8:45 a.m. HST, 38 minutes after the initial alert was sent to smartphones in Hawaii, a second emergency alert (a Civil Emergency Message) was sent, which stated:
There is no missile threat or danger to the State of Hawaii. Repeat. False Alarm.
The second alert was sent "well after everyone from Hawaii's congressional delegation to the U.S. Pacific Command had assured the world on Twitter that it was a false alarm", Pacific Business News remarked.
Governor David Ige explained at a news conference that afternoon that officials "had to initiate a manual process" and obtain authorization from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in order to send the second alert because there was no automated way to countermand the first alert. Those procedures accounted for the delay more than 30 minutes after officials had confirmed internally that the alert was inaccurate, according to officials.
Effects
During the 38 minutes between the first and second alerts, Hawaii's siren warning system—which had been tested as part of a missile preparedness exercise the previous month for the first time since the Cold War—was not formally activated. Had a missile actually been launched, the Hawaii push alert should have been followed up with another set of alarms with sirens, which did not happen, as observed by some residents. Nevertheless, officials stated that some sirens did appear to go off in some communities, with some residents reporting sirens activated on Oahu a few minutes after the push notification. Little to no activity was reported at military bases in the state. Some commercial flights were reportedly delayed for a short time, although the Hawaii Department of Transportation said there were no widespread impacts at the state's airports and harbors.
Disruptions were reported across the state. Honolulu Civil Beat reported that motorists parked inside the Interstate H-3 tunnel on the island of Oahu for shelter. Hawaii News Now reported that alarms sounded at Aloha Gymfest, an international gymnastics meet in Kailua, sending hundreds of people running for cover. Students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa reportedly headed for marked fallout shelters on campus but, finding them locked, ended up taking shelter in nearby classrooms instead. Officials at the Sony Open PGA Tour golf tournament on Oahu ordered an evacuation of the media center, while staff members sought cover in the kitchen and players' locker room. Tourists at Kualoa Ranch in Kaneohe were taken by staff up to Battery Cooper Bunker, a concrete bunker built in the mountains during WW2 as part of former Kualoa Airfield, and told to shelter there.
Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa later said her husband had been driving on a Honolulu-area freeway and saw cars speeding at up to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) after the alert was sent out. Hanabusa, who challenged Ige in the Democratic primary in the 2018 gubernatorial election held later that year, criticized Ige's conduct, arguing "The governor and his administration did not handle this correctly".
Many Hawaii residents and visitors sought shelter or rushed through emergency preparations where they were. Some discounted the alarm when they realized that they heard no sirens, and that they personally saw no immediate coverage on television or local radio. Others were in areas where sirens did go off; in addition, some television stations did broadcast the alert.