In a statewide address Monday evening, Gov. David Ige said he signed an Executive Order appointing Brigadier General Kenneth Hara to oversee a comprehensive review of the state’s emergency management enterprise and “to immediately implement needed changes.”
“General Hara is also tasked with helping us, government, businesses, families and individuals know what to do, where to go and how to prepare,” he said. “Children going down manholes, stores closing their doors to those seeking shelter and cars driving at high speeds cannot happen again. We will do a better job of educating the public.”
Hara, the Deputy Adjutant General, will give Ige an initial action plan within 30 days and a formal report in 60 days.
“Let me be clear, false notifications – and waiting for what felt like an eternity – will not happen again,” Ige said. “You have my promise on this.”
Residents and tourists remained rattled after the mistaken alert was blasted out to cellphones across the islands Saturday with a warning to seek immediate shelter and the ominous statement: “This is not a drill.”
The erroneous warning was sent during a shift change at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency when someone doing a routine test hit the live alert button, state officials said.
That employee has been reassigned to a job without access to the warning system amid an internal investigation, agency spokesman Richard Rapoza said Monday. No other personnel changes have been made, he said.
The blunder caused more than a million people in Hawaii to fear that they were about to be struck by a nuclear missile.
The agency changed protocols to require that two people send an alert and made it easier to cancel a false alarm — a process that took nearly 40 minutes.
Ige apologized “for the fear, anxiety and heartache the false alert on Saturday created for you. It was terrifying for all of us – our families, visitors, and especially, the children of Hawaii.”
He said his number one priority is the safety and security of the people of Hawaii and its visitors.
“I will not stand for scapegoating of our emergency management personnel when a number of unfortunate errors caused this event. Death threats are completely unacceptable and not how we do things here,” he said. “I am the governor and these good, decent emergency personnel work for me. I am ultimately responsible.”
Ige said he wished he could say there was a simple reason for why it took so long to get the correction to the false alert out.
”While we got to Twitter, TV and Facebook fairly quickly, we were hamstrung by a number of factors making it difficult to get a timely cancellation out to cell phones,” he said. “It is clear what happened Saturday revealed the need for additional safeguards and improvements to our state system.”
Ige said he has directed the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency to cease their ballistic missile defense internal warning drill until a full review of the facts and circumstances surrounding the false alert is concluded.
Meantime, the state has created an immediate process with a pre-scripted cancellation and false alert message. It has imposed a two-step, two-person rule for all TV, radio and wireless activation. And it established better protocols and lines of communication across our emergency management network.
”Moving forward, there is much to fix, plan for and do,” Ige said.
He said he is pushing for the ability to test the cellular alerts, just as the state does with the monthly siren test.
He said that “long before Saturday” he signed a formal opt-in agreement with FirstNet, a nationwide broadband network for the first responder community being built across the state.
FirstNet makes it possible to exchange critical information instantly among all of Hawaii’s responder community.
“I look forward to partnering with the Legislature and our Congressional delegation to make sure we provide you with the tools and resources you need to keep you and your families safe,” Ige said. “We are a resilient community. We look out for and help each other.”
”Hawaii knows how to stand strong and defend itself,” Ige concluded. “But we must also work for a more peaceful world. We must demand a de-escalation with North Korea, so sirens and warnings become a thing of the past.”
