The Hawaiian emergency worker who sent a false ballistic missile alert earlier this month has been fired, after a investigation into the incident found the worker believed the drill situation to be a real-deal end of days scenario.
It has also been revealed the worker had previously confused a fire drill and a tsunami drill for actual emergency scenarios.
In remarks supporting a preliminary report by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), attorney adviser James Wiley said “a combination of human error and inadequate safeguards contributed to this false alert,” and detailed the sequence of events which lead to that state-wide panic.
The report states a midnight shift supervisor at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency chose to conduct a surprise ballistic missile drill during the transition to the day shift, specifically to test staffers under stress.
The midnight shift supervisor informed the day shift supervisor of the plan, but the day shift supervisor mistakenly believed the drill was intended only for outgoing midnight shift staffers. Subsequently, the day shift supervisor wasn’t in a position to oversee the incoming officers during the drill.
At 8:05am, the midnight shift supervisor kicked off the drill by calling the uninformed day shift officer. Pretending to be from the US Pacific Command, the supervisor played a recorded message over the phone.
The message began and ended with the words “EXERCISE, EXERCISE, EXERCISE” – as is standard for emergency drills – but, for some reason, also included the phrase “THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
Not exactly the kind of language you want to be hearing in a drill situation, that. The day shift worker subsequently sent off the alert at 8:07am, which appeared on mobile phones and flashed on TV screens across the state.
The worker who sent the alert refused to be interviewed by the FCC during the investigation, but investigators obtained a statement they wrote shortly after the ordeal. In it, the worker claimed to not to have heard the words “EXERCISE, EXERCISE, EXERCISE,” only the key phrase “THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
Five other workers interviewed by the FCC claim to have heard the drill-specific portion of the message.
It had been speculated the worker who sent the alert knew the situation was a drill, but had accidentally sent the real alert from a drop-down computer menu.
Wiley said “because we’ve not been able to interview the day shift warning officer who transmitted the false alert, we’re not in a position to fully evaluate the credibility of their assertion that they believed there was an actual missile threat and intentionally sent the live alert.”
However, Wiley added it’s notable the worker “accurately recalled after the event that the announcement did say ‘This is not a drill.’”
The report notes there was no protocol for reacting to a false alert scenario, leading to 38 minute delay before the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency issued a correction.
Since the incident, new protocols have been introduced: two ranking emergency service workers must greenlight every alert and test, supervisors must be given notice ahead of time, and processes to more rapidly react to false alerts have been put in place.
The chief of Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency, Vern Miyagi, also resigned following the release of the preliminary report, accepting “full responsibility” for the terrifying ordeal. Another staffer stepped down before facing disciplinary action, and a fourth staffer in in the process of being suspended without pay.
