Embarrassed Hawaiian officials have already installed a new safeguard to prevent another debacle like on Saturday, when residents received a terrifying emergency text saying a missile strike was imminent.
Gov. David Ige has said that an employee with the state’s emergency management office “pushed the wrong button,” issuing the dire missive when he was supposed to simply test the warning system.
But panic-stricken islanders had to wait 38 minutes for a second alert giving them the all-clear — because an existing “cancel” button only stops “further issuances of the false alarm,’’ the state’s emergency management chief, Vern Miyagi, told MSNBC on Sunday.
So the agency has “installed another cancellation button that will put out a pre-scripted message that says this is a false alarm,” Miyagi said.
“It will be instantaneous if this ever happens again — but our goal is not to ever have this happen again,” he added.
The agency will no longer conduct the test during shift changes as it had Saturday — a situation that exacerbated confusion amid the false alarm — and now requires two people to push the alert button as an added measure of protection against false alarms, he said.
The news comes after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai slammed the agency for failing to implement proper safeguards and promised a full investigation.