Those two rules, he realizes, are at the moment in direct conflict. He's only done that once, on 9/11. He will remember being relieved that traffic was light on the H-1, because he also will remember thinking he does not want to be vaporized on the H-1. It's Saturday morning, so traffic probably won't be too bad. The only thing worse would be yelling at his son when the sky flashed. That also means that he expects to hear some noise by now, an explosion, or at least a good, loud whoosh. She's trying not to panic. "Putting kids in manholes is not a good idea," Vern Miyagi told a few dozen people six days after the fact. ", "Let me check," Vern says. All of that was simulated. It's mostly accurate. She knows that friend, the same one who thought a lunatic was going to shoot up Waikiki on Halloween night. Why would they remain in a burning building? He understands, nods, points to the boy, indicating his son had explained it to him. She said she hopes “the rest of the country… leaders in Washington pay attention to … this threat of nuclear war.”. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is interviewed on "This Week" following the human error that led to a false alarm missile message. She's trained for mass-casualty events, and the first rule is to be ready to report to work. Fire and fury to bloody nose to whatever got tweeted overnight. He was probably a very good general. But Kathleen was scared, near tears. “There’s a missile coming.” Pause. The phones aren't working. Vern was in the military for almost four decades. It has missiles capable of hitting Hawaii—and the mainland—but the odds of a warhead surviving re-entry into the atmosphere aren't clear, and the targeting technology is probably primitive enough to make any attack less of a precise strike and more of a horseshoes-and-hand-grenades toss. A ballistic missile was en route to Hawaii, the alert warned, and people had only a few moments to seek shelter. He is the administrator of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, which means people who work for him sent the alert. He has no idea why he thinks this, and he never will. News Hawaii missile alert saga forces top officials to resign. He believed her more than he believed his phone. No sirens wailed. That does not concern him: Cell reception in her condo is spotty. She's relieved that her mom and dad are with her. She's relieved for a moment. “Nuclear attack is not a game,” Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said to ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" Sunday. But the clock is ticking. One widely circulated video, for instance, showed a man helping his child down a manhole. A red banner stretched across the top of the screen, words scrolling right to left. Anticipated time of impact recorded. But there are glitches in syntax perhaps because there were glitches in Hans's words. Except they can't. There is only one other reason. Her whole family is in Hawaii. Andrew starts down the stairs. She reads the black letters in the white box, starts to read it again. The protocol sent out by the university where they both teach seemed to them to come down to don't stay in your car; get out; go into a building, or just lie down in the street. No one was reported to have died that morning, not from the nuclear panic, anyway. He's at his house in Hawaii Kai, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper and, now, reaching for his phones. Top Stories. He was on a guided-missile destroyer enforcing the no-fly zone after the first Iraq war, a few dozen Tomahawks belowdecks, some of them tipped with nuclear warheads. Becca went to the bathroom, came back. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. Active shooter. ", Jeff slumps with relief, hurries back down to Kathleen. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. He seemed mildly annoyed by only one thing. The first rule is to override instinct. They live on the third floor, and when the rain falls in the right place at the right time, they can see the mountains rising up to meet a rainbow. Wade lives in a midcentury condominium on the western slope of Diamond Head. Wade can feel frustration rising. This has never happened before. Ole Miss was a point up on Florida. He missed three calls from Daphne and he has a 13-second voice mail from his friend Hans. Six days after he told me that, he resigned. This is essentially pointless: It means only that any phone that was off or out of range at 8:07 will not, from this moment on, get the warning. "If we're going to die," Jeff says, "at least we're together.". A friend, her daughter says, who heard it from another friend. More water. His kids weren't growing up that way, and he believed they would never have to. "A missile alert, apparently.". Some of them stand near the cage where the guy who passes out towels is eating fried rice and watching a basketball game, like it was no more or less boring than any other Saturday morning in a locker room. Maybe he'll open that bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue he won in a raffle four years ago, toast the bill collectors who won't be calling anymore, get half-drunk before the terror is called off. But between his rations and Kathleen's sensible clothing, they believe they are prepared. She did not consider where best to shelter. He says he did not hear "exercise, exercise, exercise" but that he did hear "this is not a drill"—language that, unsurprisingly, is not typically included in a drill. © 2021 Condé Nast. She can't reach Wade. Stephanopoulos asked if she thinks the U.S. should talk directly to North Korea. Hans went out to the balcony. They know there is no shooter by now: Enough kids have phones that word has gotten around about a missile streaking toward Hawaii. She realized she'd made a mistake, that she'd filled the tub with hot water. And if they're all going to die, shouldn't they do it together? He starts toward the bedroom, stops, picks up his guitar, carries it with him, sets it against the wall just outside the bedroom door. "But people talk about PTSD," he said. Updated 7:20 AM ET, Tue January 16, 2018 Andrew Canonico recognizes him: same guy who does the announcing at all the wrestling meets. Pause. Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii said, "Nuclear attack is not a game. He turned on the local CBS affiliate. Kathleen says nothing, but feels a flash of anger, resentment. "Did you hear about the alert?" "Is this real? “I think.”. It was a group project, each student studying one topic to include in a letter to Mazie Hirono, Hawaii's junior senator. It's a test, has to be, one of Kim's ICBMs that overshot Japan and is careering back to earth on a path no one can predict, and, hell, better to spook everyone with a warning just in case. Daphne hears noise in the background. He's read the alert, but it doesn't make sense. Vern Miyagi calls the number for the State Warning Point. Chris goes to the bathroom, plugs up the tub, turns on the tap. It's the same system used to warn of hurricanes and tsunamis and the like, and to warn of other threats in other states. But Wade should have been there three minutes ago, maybe sooner if he'd stepped on the gas. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. There is no reason. He will remember the sense of being on a mission—get Lucas to Daphne—and that nothing else was ever more important. She believes that has happened, too. Hans watched her for a moment, curious, bemused. There are voices in the stairwell above, doors opening, footsteps. "If we survive the blast," she tells herself, "there will be fallout. She'd wait until Sunday to figure out a plan for the next emergency, decide how to keep everyone safe and together. The county administrators do, too. "Why are you taking those?" No Path to Correct Mistakes HEMA used Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) , … Daphne tells him it's a false alarm but to get there anyway, she wants Lucas with her. Ad Choices, The Real Story of the Hawaiian Missile Crisis. No alert. Maybe he'll try to drive far away, across the mountains, and he'll call his family to say goodbye, but they won't believe him, and when they finally do, he has to spend his last moments on earth calming his parents. "Look, it's a missile warning, probably just a test, but Mom wants us to go over there, so, c'mon, let's get moving.". But the system isn't set up to send a second cell-phone alert saying that the first was erroneous. The elevators stop in the teens. Our country's history of regime-change wars has led countries like North Korea to develop and hold on to these nuclear weapons because they see it as their only deterrent against regime change.”. "Absolutely and immediately," Gabbard responded. "I don't understand what 'human error' even means.". The following is a theory I read from u/spiegro "In this timeline the time traveler succeeded at averting yet another assured nuclear disaster, but only in the nick of time. A bunch of kids decided they didn't feel much like wrestling that day, but the tournament at Punahou still went on, albeit behind schedule. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Weren't all those cars going to clog up the streets? She gathers all the cash in the house, identification for her and the kids. Kathleen had texted her brother at 8:22. Mason went two and one, came in third. Employee 1 disputes all of that and told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that he was a scapegoat for a chaotic and badly supervised drill. "You," she says to her son, "get pillows and blankets and put them in the pantry." Hawaii Ballistic Missile Warning Was Not Exactly an Accident. Punahou School has large locker rooms, so the boys have space to spread out, high school wrestlers on one side, younger boys on the other. "See, it's a ballistic missile, not a nuclear one. THIS IS NOT A DRILL." He told me the same thing a few days later in his office in the bunker. There were handouts, including one showing the relative safety of various structures (the building techniques of the three little pigs are a reasonable guide) and rooms within them—low is better than high, interior is better than not. Just five days ago, in fact, Kim agreed to send athletes to the Olympics. Some kids are already saying it was a false alarm, that they'd heard it from a family friend in military intelligence or the National Guard. She took a long soak. He's a soft-spoken man, but in a way that suggests he's confident in the few things he says rather than afraid to say the wrong thing. Either way, he was fired in late January. "Just stay together and wait.". She's in the lobby, where she'd waited with her parents, close to the stairs down below street level. There's no reason a high school kid, even a bright one, should know the difference between a delivery vehicle and a warhead. And all of that happened early on a Saturday morning, when the tech people weren't at work. Fire? The old woman looked at him quizzically, as if he might be a loon. The weigh-in is already taking too long: Some of the boys wrestling at 106 missed the skin check for ringworm, and it's slowing everything down. Chris is good in an emergency, methodical, practical, believes that one creates her own circumstances. For once, he'd taken his phone with him, was listening to Zero 7 on Pandora when Kathleen called, told him about the alert. A man is bent over a microphone. Wade is standing in the bathroom doorway, waiting, trying not to disrupt the routine. "In case there's another missile alert," she said. The Honolulu police know it's a false alarm. I should wear long sleeves. It happened in Rockford, Washington, in September, and just the month before in a little New Mexico town called Aztec, and it happened at Sandy Hook and Columbine and all the other ones, too many to remember the names. She suspects ChapStick and eye drops will be essential. If North Korea did launch an ICBM toward Hawaii, the military's Pacific Command would notify the SWP, where the staff would tick through a checklist 20 steps long. Or she will survive and suffer horribly. A commercial airliner banked out over the Pacific, and another one was coming in behind it, a white dot against the Wai'anae Range. Hawaii missile alert false alarm nr_00000000.jpg Related Article From paradise to panic: Hawaii residents and vacationers run for cover, fearing missile attack War gamers and analysts consider an attack to be vanishingly unlikely, but the people in charge of issuing warnings still need to be well practiced. He tells himself he is not afraid. Water. He also will not arrive at Daphne's until 8:54. Wade has to call her, make arrangements to pick it up. An emergency alert of an imminent missile threat to Hawaii was broadcast and sent to mobile phones across the state at about 8:07 a.m. on Saturday, causing panic. Only in Hawaii does the list of alerts include the threat of nuclear annihilation and, with that, existential panic. Chris rolls back the other way. "There is no missile threat or danger to the State of Hawaii," it reads. They have to stop the alert, undo it. He seems nervous. But he's less scared than he was, which was pretty badly when he first heard there was a missile inbound, when kids were talking about the island getting nuked. Hans grew up surrounded by dozens of silos loaded with missiles that could destroy the planet at a time when that was not unthinkable. Maybe. Traffic is horrible enough without abandoned cars littering the roads. Not long after, there was a huge … Whoops, our bad, we didn’t mean it. Hans hangs up, calls Wade. That report claims that he has "been a source of concern…for over 10 years" and that he "has confused real life events and drills on at least two separate occasions.". She opened her eyes, confused, the phone blurry. There's a parking deck on the ground floor, walled in, a door exiting to the street. He will remember the drive. He doesn't waste time playing it, just reads the transcription. An hour after breakfast, his daughter, the 7-year-old, was packing for a sleepover. Nor does he hear an undulating wail from the sirens staked around Oahu, a tone his agency began testing only the month before to differentiate a missile alert from the flat squeal of a tsunami warning. It's an odd, Strangelove moment: Just as a nuclear war can't be called off once it starts, neither can the warning of one. She does not hear any sirens, which she finds odd because she always hears the tsunami warnings, even in her apartment 25 floors above the Ala Wai Canal. "I need you to bring Lucas here," Daphne says. Lucas is working on a project about American symbols, and he's chosen the World Trade Center, which is a much different symbol from the one it was 20 years ago. There was security footage of students scrambling around a college quad that the cable networks seemed to play on a loop, if only because there wasn't much panic-in-the-streets imagery to be found. That is not completely surprising. She's holding her phone. Still, Wade thinks, dying on Interstate H-1 would be a pitiful way to go. It's not a fully coherent thought, more of an instinctual recognition, utterly confusing yet perfectly rational. Each has a message with black text in a white box. And when a box popped up asking him to confirm his choice, he clicked yes. She called them into the bedroom, piled them on the bed, and played, tickling and laughing and not saying anything about a missile. Every second is excruciating. She looked at him as if it should be perfectly obvious. The dread it inspired wasn’t. If it's not, he doesn't want Lucas's last moments to be ones of utter terror. Figuring out where to wait was an exercise in risk management. A ballistic missile is different.". Authorities confirmed the alert was an error, and Hawaii’s Governor David Ige said he was meeting with authorities to determine what caused the alarm. No one ever programmed in a "false alert" code because why would one be needed? Every minute believing a nuclear missile is inbound is a minute spent preparing to die or to desperately survive. The man who sent the original alert has never been publicly identified. "It's a false alarm," she says. H awaii’s false ballistic missile alert was the latest reminder of the nuclear threat that North Korea poses to the U.S. amid the rising tensions and war of words between the two nation’s leaders. Twenty-one minutes now. Andrew gets up. It's her supervisor telling her not to go to work, to stay where she is. From award-winning writing and photography to binge-ready videos to electric live events, GQ meets millions of modern men where they live, creating the moments that create conversations. Right? On January 13th, 2018, the residents of Hawaii picked up their phones to find a warning: a missile would be hitting the islands imminently. A surgeon put four stents in his chest after that, though, so correlation isn't necessarily causation. I love you so much. On the other hand, it is possible Oahu is going to be destroyed by a nuclear warhead, even if only by accident. But is that any odder than getting tweeted into a nuclear war? She decides to wait on the stairs. He showed up this morning a half-pound over, had to run six laps to sweat out the last few ounces. Blame terrible UI. Chris grew up in California, where an earthquake or a mudslide was always waiting to wreck the place, and her father always told her to gather water if anything bad was happening. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Our phones went off in unison with the civil defense tone, all capital letters saying “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. ", This story originally appeared in the April 2018 issue with the title "Things You Do with 38 Minutes to Live.". The three of them sat on the couch, the girls watching cartoons, Hans texting friends in Canada. A tornado warning mistakenly sent in Kansas is, for example, at worst a brief inconvenience. "Hey man Daphne is trying to get a hold of you and me there's a notice we got about an incoming missile and it's on the news—maybe it with yet so all right get a hold of us…". I HAVE CONFIRMED WITH OFFICIALS THERE IS NO INCOMING MISSILE. Myanmar police to protesters: Leave or face force. He's 15 years old, and he's been cutting weight for days, trying to make 160. He tells himself again he's not afraid, and maybe he even believes it, and he keeps moving toward safety. Lucas is brushing his teeth, a ritual he does carefully, conscientiously, with a battery-powered Spider-Man brush. There is slow-motion shock, and no one knows how he will react until he is forced to. ", "I'm trying not to traumatize our child," Wade says. I have been talking about the seriousness of this threat posed to the people of Hawaii and this country coming from North Korea. There had been no threat of fire and fury, like last summer, but jabbering about a limited strike, a "bloody nose" assault, as if the nuclear-armed world was a middle-school playground. On the morning of Saturday, January 13, 2018, a ballistic missile alert was accidentally issued via the Emergency Alert System and Commercial Mobile Alert System over television, radio, and cellphones in the U.S. state of Hawaii.The alert stated that there was an incoming ballistic missile threat to Hawaii, advised residents to seek shelter, and concluded: "This is not a drill". "Don't you believe it," Chris says. Vern was in the military for almost four decades. "That's on me," he said. If everyone's going to die, he could at least be a little spooked. That said, the false alarm revealed weaknesses in preparation and, in some people, instincts for how to best protect themselves. She's thinking calmly, deliberately, and, she believes, rationally. Two top officials in Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency have resigned after a false missile alert sent the US state into mass hysteria. Another worker put the call on loudspeaker, so everyone could hear the drill message. Wade lies about Santa Claus because the truth would be traumatic, and that's his other rule, not to traumatize his kid. "Please," she tells Hans, "you've got to reach Wade.". But she knows there is no missile coming: She saw the tweet Tulsi Gabbard, one of Hawaii's representatives in Congress, put out at 8:19: HAWAII—THIS IS A FALSE ALARM. But it took 38 minutes for an official correction of the alert to get broadcast around the state. No, whenever there's a drill, everyone gathers outside. Lucas was so thrilled by how smart his dad was that for weeks after he'd ask, "Tell me the Big Bang story again. Wade understands that as a practical matter of survival, this makes no sense, driving from Diamond Head to downtown, closer to Pearl Harbor, which probably is the intended target if, in fact, anything at all has been targeted. He pauses, motions toward the center of the house, the safest part, where his wife and his grandchildren should be. Jeff wants to be certain. She wants Lucas and Wade there, too. The 15-word message seems like it had been hastily written, judging by the odd capitalization and that the word "repeat" does not, in fact, precede anything being repeated in the cell-phone version. Chris Luan rolls over in bed, reaches for her phone. He splurged on the real maple syrup, too, even though Lucas likes the fake stuff better. Clock counting down to that time activated. He can differentiate, by training and habit, realistic threats from wildly improbable ones, and he can do so quickly. Middle-aged, balding. Death, a good death, always seems to involve loved ones gathered around, doesn't it? The system doesn't work that way. The … “This is something that I have been calling for a long time. I'm going to die. "Now," the man with the microphone says. Hans asked his eldest daughter if she wanted to break out the Spam she got for Christmas, Spam being an entirely appropriate gift in Hawaii. The ringer is off and he hasn't checked it all morning because he's been making breakfast, cinnamon pancakes with a touch of nutmeg. So when he opened a drop-down menu on his computer, he deliberately clicked the line for the live alert and not the line that was nearly identical except for the word "test" in it. ", Hundreds of thousands of phones get another alert. Mason Canonico checks the time, does the arithmetic in his head. But maybe it'd be better. And if they were all going to die, she'd rather her children didn't do so screaming. There is a girl there, alone and weeping, holding her phone as if it were a wounded bird. He's tired and he's hungry and he'd rather stay on the mat. Or he might sit mute in a chair at Supercuts, pretty sure he should be terrified—the man on the radio said to move away from windows, and Supercuts has huge windows—but no one else seems worried, so he sits very still and hopes the woman with the scissors by his head has steady hands. They have to move, get down from a fragile, collapsible high-rise, get as low as possible. He doesn't say anything, but drops his head into his hand. "It was a false alarm. "You keep saying 'human error,' " a woman in the back half-shouted at him. Jeff and Kathleen are in the stairwell, near the door that leads out to the street. He calls Daphne, but the connection drops. Below that, in regular text but all in capital letters, it reads: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. From a drop-down menu on a computer program, he saw two options: “Test missile alert” and “Missile alert.” Vern was in the cafeteria of the Pearl City Highlands Elementary School on a Friday night in late January, ostensibly as part of a public-awareness campaign. Maybe he'll be a little more patient with his son. He wouldn't give up the name of Employee 1. Hans never wakes her up like that, abrupt, adamant. False missile alert sparks Hawaii panic. The man shrugs. She had her backpack open, and she was stuffing it with blankets, more than she could ever reasonably need. Daphne dials Wade's number. The adults are locking down the place. He doesn't want to walk down 25 flights, but he doesn't want to be trapped in an elevator, either. If they were too close to the door, the pressure wave of the explosion might tear it open, suck them into a firestorm. This cannot be good, if only because the racket is interrupting Vern's quiet Saturday morning. The people of Hawaii are paying the price now for decades of failed leadership in this country of failure to directly negotiate” with North Korea. Discover all times top stories about Hawaii Missile Alert on Medium. Hawaii Missile Alert - Conspiracy Theories So if you are like my daughter, and you haven’t heard, apparently an alert went out in residents in Hawaii via their phones that a ballistic missile was on its way, take cover, not a drill. Her work requires her to be calm when others are not. He fried it up for breakfast, and between that and playing with Mom and Dad, maybe the morning would end up a happy memory. "No," one of his friends had told him. Published 14 January 2018. Vern waited her out, let her finish. A woman who ran for shelter in Hawaii after receiving an alert about an imminent missile attack has told of tears running down the faces of young children as their parents tried to reassure them. He has a vague memory of "20 minutes from launch to impact," a number he'd heard in a public-service announcement or a safety briefing or some such. She pushed Hans's hand back so she could read without her glasses on. Hans Nielsen has been up since 5:30, more than an hour before the sun rose over the Ko'olau Mountains. The Hawaii missile alert system contained none of those features. He turns the corner, moves down the second flight. ", Wade has never lied to his son. Her parents from New York, who watched the towers come down, her mom choking on dust that pushed up to 49th Street, are with her on the 31st floor of a high-rise downtown. Wade has no idea why the earth never stops spinning, so he improvised a child's version of the Big Bang theory. So do all the other boys, more than a hundred of them. "Who said that?". He suspects he might need it later, and he wants it to be within arm's reach of the bedroom. Kathleen says to the man. He went into the bedroom, said her name, held his phone close to her face. That didn't seem like much of a plan. "I don't know," Chris says. Wade answers. They're one flight up, sitting close to each other, Kathleen in her sensible long sleeves, staring at the door. She thought getting them out of the house, back to normal life as quickly as possible, was the best thing for them. Now, Jeff checks Kathleen's phone. Hawaii missile alert standdown delayed by forgotten log-in. "But go ahead and hunker down anyway.". The Hawaii alert was an accident. It's one of his personal rules, to answer every question as honestly and appropriately as he can. There are news stories about how the person who sent out the Hawaii Missile Alert was absolutely convinced that the threat was real. The SWP has issued a live ballistic-missile alert to the entire state. But if they were too far away and the building collapsed—they were pretty sure the building would collapse—they might get buried in the rubble. The congresswoman added, “We've got to understand why Kim Jong Un is saying he's not going to give up his nuclear weapons. And it is funny, in hindsight. Vern is startled but not alarmed. David Ige address the media after a mistaken alert warned residents of an imminent ballistic missile … Below that, in regular text but all in capital letters, it reads: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. He doesn't appear to speak English, so Kathleen shows him her phone. There is not solely, or even mostly, panic. She's holding her phone so Vern can see the screen. And even if Kim detonated his biggest nuke directly over Pearl Harbor, most people on Oahu, 80 or even 90 percent, would survive it. "But people talk about PTSD," he said. "Repeat. He explained that an employee had issued the alert in error and stressed preparedness for future catastrophic events. Daphne, panicky. He looks at her blankly. Kathleen is figuring out more practical measures. He had to wake his wife, Becca. He goes to the bedroom, grabs his iPhone. GQ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. He'll drive to Diamond Head, wait in the bunker with the people who work for him who've just scared the shit out of a million civilians. False Alarm.". She dials his number anyway. ", Hawaiian congresswoman calls false missile alarm 'an epic failure of leadership'.
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