Radio News: False Hawaiian missile warning explained in FCC report

Jan 30, 2018 10:50 pm
Ars Technica reports that the Federal Communications Commission issued a preliminary report Jan. 30 about the false missile alert sent to mobile phones and television and radio broadcast stations in Hawaii in early January. The employee who sent the alert claims he did not hear a recording saying a missile announcement was just a test. The employee, in a written statement because he refused to be interviewed, says he did not hear, "exercise, exercise, exercise,” but heard "this is not a test." Proving what he heard may or may not be difficult, but the fact that one person could send a missile alert to everyone in Hawaii, and no one retracted that warning for 38 minutes, is not in question. The report says a shift change a few minutes before the incident helped to make it possible. "As a result, the day shift supervisor was not in the proper location to supervise the day shift warning officers when the ballistic missile defense drill was initiated," the FCC wrote. The report blames, "a combination of human error and inadequate safeguards contributed to the transmission of this false alert" and that "HI-EMA has taken steps designed to ensure that an incident such as this never happens again." Now, in Hawaii, there is a two-person process to send out missile alerts and a new process to cancel an alert in case of an error. Read the full story at Ars Technica.
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