https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kznxde/hawaii-ballistic-missile-warning-no-testing-system New Year's resolution, be better than the media
Ya, I tend to agree. So...what exactly DID happen then? It also strikes me as a big problem that it 38 MINUTES to issue a correction. That is WAAAYYYY too long. You would think any such alert would automatically get sent to certain personnel, so that they can instantly see what alerts were sent out. They would immediately see that one, and check on it. It shouldn't take very long to realize no, no one told us missiles were coming. That shouldn't take much longer than it took to read this. You remember the old adage about it being a crime to yell 'Fire!' in a crowded movie house? This is yelling 'Fire!' to an entire state. It strikes me as a BIG problem. Hopefully a simple fix, but a BIG problem nonetheless. If if really was just was someone pressing the wrong button...that means the whole process is bad, which is still a BIG problem.
They said they were going to introduce 2nd man confirmation. Ok, HITF was that not in place already? And how was everyone not IMMEDIATELY aware of what had just gone out? No one in that office has....cell phones? Wouldn't that sort of check of what's going out be common practice? This is either something intentional.... or a clusterfrack of gigantic proportions. Not only should something like this never happen, but it should be set up to be caught and corrected immediately (within seconds). I DO hope somebody gets fired for this. Not necessarily the person who 'hit the wrong button', but the person in charge, who CLEARLY never had things set up right in the first place. Look at the various posts here...this caused a LOT of grief and panic. The opposite of its purpose. When your agency fails this miserably, and it is because you never had the right processes there to begin with...you should be fired. Get someone competent in there.
IF this happened with just one person press the wrong button...and then confirming it himself..this has to be the worst design EVER! Hell..how is this not considered "terrorism"? Causing massive panic across an entire island for 30 mins!??
Real question - how many other states had such a shoddy system? For all we know, this might be the system in place across half the country.
I asked this earlier...other than Alaska I can't think of a reasonable reason for any of them. Don't make me get started on the goddam mineshafts.
Well those mobile alerts started what a few years ago? Mostly weather related - we have them here in NYC for storms and such. I wonder if it's all just the same system....weather, amber alerts, nuclear attack - which might explain why nobody conceived of the idea of a mistake resulting in mass panic on the mobile alert side of the equation but rather that the error would be in the mistake of the military thinking it was under attack. It makes sense that would be the focus, and that in today's world, with a nuclear attack not really something on people's minds until Trump - I could see how all of this happening.
NORAD should be taking care of all that. I have no idea why some guy at a cube full of buttons in Hawaii has the authority or ability to set off a global panic by pushing the wrong one.
My first thoughts too. sending out weather alerts, or missing children, ok. Sending out alerts of impending nuclear war? Ya, that's different. Awesome Molly Hatchet, btw. Haven't heard that song in ages, and haven't seen the album cover in a lot longer.
Because NORAD is part of the military and the military's purpose isn't to communicate warnings to civilians. It's to coordinate military forces and weapons in response to an aerospace attack. It communicates to FEMA which has the emergency alert system (EAS) which in theory is suppose to allow the president to send a national alert out to the entire country covering all forms of communication (radio, alarms and text alerts) in under 10 minutes. It's not all automated because those systems also are coordinated by the individual states. There isn't one single federal system because we live in a Republic. And it makes sense that FEMA has to coordinate with individual states. In the event of an earthquake for instance - it's most likely the local authorities are going to be able to respond first to an emergency well before FEMA could coordinate. I am not sure how EAS works in terms of connecting to local systems but I can't imagine it's all that well integrated given the cost. So at some point there's a human waiting there and has to quickly pass on an emergency alert as if you think about it - every second counts in the case of a nuclear attack when you may only have minutes before the missiles arrive. The real question to me is why isn't there at least a pop-up that says, "Are you sure you really want to do this - as if it is a false alarm you're going to be the biggest goat of all time"
Sure, it could be human error. It could also have been an accidentally-on-purpose test of what the public response would be if there was ever a real missile coming. If nothing else, I hope the feds are now leveraging everything they can to understand the public reaction since it happened anyway. It could help future preparedness to understand what people did when they got the warning.
False alert is an old but effective trick to impose fear into people's mind. It was not the drop down menu. it was the peace talk between two Koreas.
The timing is pretty suspicious. Of course, maybe we're doing more tests now because of NK relations, and therefore more opportunity for error.
or it could have had political motivations behind it. I have to believe that the somewhat on purpose was involved...otherwise the 38 minutes to rescind part is just inexplicable, at least without invoking gross incompetence all over the place. If indeed gross incompetence...this opens up the question beyond just Hawaii (ie, is everywhere else that messed up, too?).
First, not only should it be 2nd man...but shouldn't it be the entire agency, or at least the heads, don't they get the alerts that are being sent out? Do none of them own cellphones (if not, shouldn't that be required?)?. Assuming this was an accident, here's what should have happened. 1. incorrect missile alert message goes out. 2. Within seconds, multiple people within the agency are aware of this, including the person who actually sent it. 3. One of them calls to confirm, or the person who sent it realizes what just happened 4. It becomes readily apparent this was a mistake. 5. A recant message is sent out. I don't see how this could possibly take more than a few minutes. The only reason I could see for this happening, is that various leaders did receive the message, but assumed it was part of the test. OK...how did that happen (ie, that their testing process doesn't allow those receiving the test to know if it was the test or not)? You would think test messages only go out to a certain set of recipients...ideally phones that are ONLY used during testing. Also, the test message should be clearly labeled *TEST*. Again, multiple things seem to be very messed up here. Given the 38 minute time frame, the 'recall' message might as well have said 'Well, since you are receiving this, clearly the alert was an error'. I mean, good grief. Also, what other states could this occur in? Wouldn't that be....all of them? Which state never has the need for an emergency alert to go out? Or, specific to this issue, which state is immune from missile attack (hint: none of them)?
I suspect this was done intentionally by either a single Trump-hating leftist, or a group of them, with the intention of trying to make the President look bad. Hawaii is run by Democrats. Trump had absolutely nothing to do with this and his rhetoric with NK has actually spurred dialogue between NK & SK per the SK president. Similar to the liberal government in Puerto Rico slow-walking hurricane aid deployment and trashing perfectly good MREs and hurricane supplies in dumpsters and then complaining about lack of federal response. Liberals don't give a **** who they hurt as long as it chips away at our President.
I suspect this was done intentionally by either a single Trump-nut sucking righty, or a group of them, with the intention of trying to make the President look less terrible. Hawaii is a state in a country run by Republicans. Trump had absolutely nothing to do with the dialogue between NK & SK per reality so I'm not sure why I'm even discussing this. Similar to the righty federal government slow-walking hurricane aid deployment in New Orleans during Katrina, the federal response has been tragic in Puerto Rico and trashing the residents still living without electricity, running water and limited communications seems like a s**tty thing to do.
