Not everyone knew that! We have a family friend who is there playing in a golf tournament. The players take their families on this trip because they have two tournaments there. They didn’t know it was a false alarm! They were terrified and trying to determine if they should be hiding somewhere in the home they’re renting. It was a terrible experience for a lot of people.
I don’t understand why you keep insisting that “locals” knew there was no emergency. That’s not true. All of the major news outlets are reporting on Hawaii residents, not just tourists, reacting with distress to the alerts.
Can you imagine hearing this while watching a basketball game?!
http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2018/01/13/hawaii-basketball-game-false-missile-alert-sot-nr.cnn
I figured H had a virus on his phone and I had deactivated my alarms/alerts. Neither of us believed it was serious as there was no other indication of a problem—no sirens, no unusual traffic, nothing.
I believe there will be new procedures to help prevent false alarms next time as well as procedures of what we are supposed to do in the event of a real attack. None of us have concrete shelters or bunkers or anything else. In any case if everything is irradiated not sure there is anywhere safe to shelter for extended time or safe for anything to consume thereafter.
@Shimainu
Video shows otherwise:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-terrifying-moment-a-fake-missile-alert-interrupted-hawaiian-tv
I wasn’t watching TV at 8am, when the alert was sounded and there were no sirens and no Civil Defense warnings so I figured false alarm and ignored H’s phone warning.
In the event of an actual nuclear attack, there will be no safe havens. “Take shelter” is pretty meaningless really.
We never know how we’d react unless we were in the midst of it, but honestly, under the current climate NO WAY would I assume it must be an error. It would take a lot of proof of it being false for me to really buy into it. And 30+ minutes later? If I was there or I had a loved one there that would be a heck of a tense 30+ minutes until it was without a doubt confirmed as a mistake…and then I would be upset that a mistake like this could have been made what seems sort of like “no big deal”!
Yay, that is H and my attitude. Call it fatalistic or realistic, your pick.
I carry on as best I can but have no desire to be the sole survivor of any nuclear apocalypse, even if I could figure out some way to survive.
I am fine with taking appropriate precautions when they make sense, like for tsunamis and hurricanes. To me, can’t think of anything for nuclear attack.
Wow, fairly vehement backlash to what I thought were fairly innocuous comments. OK, I obviously cannot claim to speak for a million kama’aina. Many might have different experiences than me. But I think there may some sensationalizing of this story going on. None of the many locals that I talked to today were ever “terrified”. Initially alarmed, but quickly realized it was a false alarm after a few minutes verifying tv and radio reports.
I think you have to have your smart phone have alerts ON. H has his on and I gave mine off.
We’ve been on too many trips when we receive high surf warnings at 3am when we are thousands of miles from HI or any body of water.
I hadn’t realized people had taken it seriously but it appears there were different reactions by the various people in our state.
My siblings all had varied reactions. My sis was in yoga class which just continued. Another SisIL was at a conference on Maui at a hotel and they were all ushered to a “safer” location on premises—concrete and partly underground). Other sibblings were concerned and watchfully waiting.
I can understand how it could cause alarm but I saw no signs of panic.
@Shimainu just speaking for myself, I pushed back not because you were wrong but because you made it sound like anyone who thought it was real or was scared was stupid.
Anyway, put me in the camp of not wanting to live through the next world war. Just kill me at the start and save me the misery of dying from warfare, radiation, or from a lack of medicine (honestly, a lupus death sounds very unpleasant. No thank you).
This could have had some really bad consequences… check out Max Fisher on Twitter (TOS does not allow me to link to it although it is basically a news report).
Remember this?!
The Governor has indicated they are improving and reviewing procedures to prevent such a scare again and issue a correction more promptly to a false alarm. It was human error, not hacking.
Story about some people believing the alert:
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/01/texting-goodbyes-and-shielding-their-baby-cnns-tapper-reports-on-tears-in-hawaii-after-horrific-false-missile-attack-report/
You gotta figure that even if only one in ten or one in twenty people who got the alarm ended up believing it, that’s still a lot of people believing they’re about to die.
Not generally a conspiracy theory type, but I’m still cynical on the whole explanation thing.
Maybe I need some more mansplaining. Amazing there has been no word from Twitter-on-high.
Here’s what the timeline for the erroneous message and correction were:
http://khon2.com/2018/01/13/timeline-what-happened-after-false-missile-emergency-alert-was-sent/
It just took way too long for everyone to learn there was an error.
I am curious to know if, when it was believed briefly that this was real, the President was informed, and what his reaction or the reaction of the Federal government was. I haven’t heard a peep about that, though.
You talk about “fake news”. 
My brother lives in Honolulu and he and his wife took shelter in the basement garage stairwell, which I presume is the emergency drill for their high-rise building. After getting the alert on their phones, they turned on the tv for more info and saw the alerts there, and made the split-second decision to evacuate their top-floor condo. He said it was scary, but kind of funny, too. Scary because the threat is unfortunately all too real these days, funny because they felt a bit silly sitting in the stairwell, with the bottle of water and 2 tangerines they grabbed on the way out the door! They took a selfie in the “shelter”, which is pretty indicative of their state of mind in the moment.
My cousin’s dd is married to a Navy man, and they are stationed there. She absolutely believed it and called her mom in tears.