{"id":31057,"date":"2018-01-14T11:53:59","date_gmt":"2018-01-14T19:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=31057"},"modified":"2018-01-14T11:53:59","modified_gmt":"2018-01-14T19:53:59","slug":"false-alarm-in-hawaii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/14\/false-alarm-in-hawaii\/","title":{"rendered":"False Alarm in Hawaii"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday the world may have come closer than any of us want to admit to nuclear war.  While Hawaii Emergency Management Agency was trying out a new system for the very first time, an employee pressed the wrong button.  Thinking he was turning over control to the next shift, he sent out a nuclear alert instead, causing widespread panic in Hawaii.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"0114hawaiialert\"<\/p>\n

For 38 terrifying minutes, many Hawaiians spent Saturday morning hunkered in bathtubs and basements waiting for a ballistic missile strike that never came.<\/p>\n

911 networks were overwhelmed<\/a> and some fired off frantic messages to loved ones on the mainland.<\/p>\n

Hawaiian public officials called it a day they would never forget.<\/p>\n

The panic ensued after the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency mistakenly sent out an alert that warned residents of an imminent ballistic missile strike<\/a> and urged them to "seek immediate shelter."<\/p>\n

"This is not a drill," the ominous, all-caps push alert blared on people’s phones.<\/p>\n

The notice turned out to be a false alarm, but the ensuing panic quickly turned to anger and a demand for answers by Hawaiians, their politicians and even the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission about what happened<\/a>. Why was the alert sent, and why did it take 38 minutes for the Hawaiian government to correct it<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

Facing the outcry, Gov. David Ige and Hi-EMA Administrator Vern Miyagi first offered an apology and then some answers during an afternoon press conference.<\/p>\n

"I deeply apologize for the trouble and heartbreak we caused today," Miyagi said. "This is my team. We made a mistake. We are going to process this and study this to make sure this doesn\u2019t happen again."… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NBC News<\/a>><\/font><\/p>\n

Mistakes happen.  What concerns me most is not that it happened, but what happened next: nothing.  Authorities knew almost instantly that it was a false alarm.  The truth should have gone put on all the same networks immediately.  A 38 minute delay is not just unconscionable.  It could have been catastrophic.<\/font><\/p>\n

What may have saved the world is that the alert went out just after 1:00 PM EST, and Donald "Button Go Boom-Boom" Trump has just teed off at Trump International Golf Course in FL.  Now a mere nuclear alert just isn’t important enough to him to justify interrupting a golf game.  By the time he was free to attend to the matter, it was already well known that it had been a mistake.<\/font><\/p>\n

Now imagine Trump getting original alert in the White House from the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise<\/em>.  During that 38 minute delay, Trump could easily have launched nuclear strikes on North Korea, all the Muslim countries, all the "shithole" countries, and damn near everyone else, except Normay, Nambia, Binomo, and, of course, Russia.  That was too close for comfort.<\/font><\/p>\n

RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!<\/font><\/font><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday the world may have come closer than any of us want to admit to nuclear war.  While Hawaii Emergency Management Agency was trying out a new system for the very first time, an employee pressed the wrong button.  Thinking he was turning over control to the next shift, he sent out a nuclear alert […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}