Katana VentraIP

2018 Hawaii false missile alert

On the morning of January 13, 2018, an alert was accidentally issued via the Emergency Alert System and Wireless Emergency Alert System over television, radio, and cellular networks in the U.S. state of Hawaii, instructing citizens to seek shelter due to an incoming ballistic missile. It concluded with "This is not a drill". The message was sent at 8:08 a.m. local time. The state had not authorized civil defense outdoor warning sirens.

Date

January 13, 2018 (2018-01-13)

08:08:23 (HST)

38 minutes

Hawaii, United States

False alarm

38 minutes and 13 seconds later, state officials blamed a miscommunication during a drill at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency for the first message. David Ige, the governor, apologized for the erroneous alert. The Federal Communications Commission and the Hawaii House of Representatives launched investigations into the incident, leading to the resignation of the state's emergency management administrator.

Incident[edit]

The alert[edit]

The alert was sent at 8:08 a.m. Hawaii–Aleutian Standard Time.[26] People in Hawaii reported seeing the alert on their smartphones. Many screenshots of the push alert were shared on social media platforms, such as Twitter.[27][28] The alert read, in all capital letters:[29]

On January 16, only a few days after Hawaii's false alarm, Japan had a similar alarm sent out. An news staffer sent an erroneous alert about a North Korean missile fired at Japan to 300,000 followers of its "NHK News and Disaster Prevention" service.[112] Previously, NHK and other Japanese media sent alerts for each North Korean missile test, but this alert stated "It appears that North Korea has launched a missile".[112] Overall, the public reaction was not as extreme as what was witnessed in Hawaii as the NHK within 5 minutes of the alert posted on their website stating that it was a false alarm.[113]

NHK

On September 18, 2019, emergency sirens were accidentally set off on the island of Oahu during police training, causing confusion and fear among residents. Again, HI-EMA was required to issue a retraction on Twitter.

[114]

On January 12, 2020, nearly two years to the date of the Hawaii false alarm, the emergency operations center for the Canadian province of mistakenly issued an emergency alert on its Alert Ready system for all television stations and television providers, radio stations, and wireless networks in the province, containing an advisory relating to an alleged incident being addressed at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. The alert was confirmed to be a false alarm. In a nearly-identical manner to the Hawaii incident,[115][116] the false alarm was the result of an operator error by a provincial emergency operations officer during a routine internal test at the beginning of a shift; the officer accidentally forgot to log out of the live Alert Ready system (done to check if the system is operational) before running the test (meant to be sent on a second, internal system), while there was also a breakdown in communications with supervisors over the issuance of a second alert to retract it.[117]

Ontario

 – Incident which nearly precipitated nuclear warfare

1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident

 – False evacuation alert for Connecticut, United States

2005 Connecticut false evacuation alert

 – Type of emergency alert issued in the United States

Civil danger warning

 – Protection of citizens from natural disaster and military attack

Civil defense

 – Method of emergency broadcasting in the United States

Emergency Alert System

 – Warning issued by authorities to the public en masse

Emergency population warning

List of nuclear close calls

 – US joint military command

United States Indo-Pacific Command