Hawaii employee mistook drill for real missile attack in false warning incident

Pai and FCC staff discussed the January 13 event and the preliminary report during this morning’s open commission meeting in Washington. State officials say he was sacked Friday.

The mistake in Hawaii has stoked calls by lawmakers and regulators to improve wireless emergency alerts, which are slowly being updated and will include longer messages and Spanish-language versions starting next year.

The case was the same this time around, Oliveira said, as the employee genuinely believed a missile warning had been issued – even though five other employees working the same shift did not.

He still works there but has been reassigned to a job without access to the warning system.

Vern Miyagi, the administrator for the agency, resigned Tuesday, as the findings became public. A second worker has quit and another is being suspended.

The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, according to the Washington Post, issued the threat alarm at 8:07 a.m. on January 13 and two minutes later the alert was sent across the state, to which Hawaiian Governor was told that it was a false one.

It has also been revealed the worker had previously confused a fire drill and a tsunami drill for actual emergency scenarios.

Now the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which has been investigating the mistake, has revealed that the employee was taking part in an emergency drill but got confused by its wording and pressed the panic button for real. As a result, “the day shift supervisor was not in the proper location to supervise the day shift warning officers” when the drill began, the report said.

Instead, officials said, the unidentified employee had a history of mishaps and apparently did not hear a message that the missile-attack drill was simply a test.

Other workers heard the message on a speakerphone.

The FCC said the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency’s measures include more supervision of drills and alerts.

The employee made the claim in a written statement but has not been interviewed by the FCC.

Before the day shift arrived at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, workers discussed a planned drill of the state’s ballistic missile alert. “People shouldn’t miss out on potentially lifesaving information just because the alert system’s current brush stroke is too broad”.

The name of the worker hasn’t been released.

Alert-origination software didn’t differentiate between tests and live alerts and wasn’t hosted on separate domains or applications.

The alert was sent to cellphones, TV and radio stations in Hawaii, leading people to fear the state was under nuclear attack.

Ige’s office said they also will “announce some of the personnel actions that will occur within the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency”.

The report concluded that a combination of human error, absence of safeguards and inadequate computer programs contributed to the incident.

James Wiley, a cybersecurity and communications reliability staffer at the FCC, explained that there were no safeguards requiring employees check with a colleague or supervisor in order to send an alert.

The agency has stopped all future ballistic missile defense drills until it can wrap up its own investigation.