On January 13th, the emergency worker who sent the false public safety alert actually believed that a ballistic missile was coming for Hawaii.
A bit of confusion amongst the supervision came into play resulting in the 38 minutes of widespread fear. Apparently, the night shift supervisor wanted to test the emergency preparedness of the day-shift workers.
Although the day shift supervisor was informed, it was believed the test was aimed toward the night shift workers, not the day shift workers! Confused already? Well stick with me here.
There ended up being mass confusion when the Night-shift supervisor called the day-shift workers acting as the U.S military's Pacific Command. Pacific Command is positioned to detect missile threats.
It took seven minutes for officials to stop the alert broadcast, however it took another nineteen minutes to figure out how to inform the public that it was false. Fourteen minutes after that the message was actually distributed!
When all is said and done, the situation could have played out much better with just a bit of communication. Yikes!
Read more at The Washington Post