The emergency worker who mistakenly informed the entire state of Hawaii that a ballistic missile was on the way has received a new job by order of the Hawaiian Emergency Management System.
To the dismay of some, it's been confirmed that the employee will still be working for the Hawaii Emergency Operations Center...for now.
A spokesperson for the Emergency Management System refused to identify the man responsible for the incident, fearing for his personal safety.
He did however note that the worker will no longer have access to system which issues emergency alerts:
“All we will say is that the individual has been temporarily reassigned within our Emergency Operations Center pending the outcome of our internal investigation, and it is currently in a role that does not provide access to the warning system.”
To make matters worse for the worker, the person in question is now also receiving death threats.
Extreme?
It's hard to call. We're not exactly sure what the appropriate response is for single-handedly causing a 38-minute statewide panic:
The disastrous incident is being chalked up to a button mishap.
Reports state that the employee was attempting to conduct an internal missile warning test which comes with two options:
"Test missile alert," and "missile alert."
Guess what happened.