The emergency worker who sent a false missile alert that led to a terrifying 38 minutes for Hawaii earlier this month said they believed the missile threat was real, according to a preliminary federal investigation.
“A combination of human error and inadequate safeguards contributed to this false alert,” the Federal Communications Commission said in remarks on the preliminary report released Tuesday.
The report laid out a detailed timeline of the miscommunication that led to the transmission of the ballistic missile alert on Jan. 13, which sent some scrambling to seek shelter amid an increased threat from North Korea.
That morning, the midnight-shift supervisor at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency decided to conduct a spontaneous ballistic missile defense drill during the transition to the day shift, according to the report.
At around 8 a.m. local time (1 p.m. ET), the midnight shift supervisor informed the dayshift supervisor about the plan to conduct that drill, but the incoming supervisor believed it was only for the midnight shift warning officers — not the officers about to begin, according to the report.
“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 report said.
The midnight shift supervisor initiated that drill at around 8:05 a.m., pretending to be the U.S. Pacific Command and playing a recorded message over the phone to the day shift officer, according to the report.
The recorded message began and ended with the phrase “exercise, exercise, exercise,” according to the report, but also featured language scripted for use during an actual live ballistic missile test alert, including the sentence “this is not a drill.”
The worker who sent the alert wrote in a statement that he heard the “this is not a drill” portion and not the parts indicating it was an exercise, according to the report. The day shift worker wrote that he therefore “believed that the missile threat was real,” according to the report. Two minutes later, that officer transmitted the live incoming missile alert to the state of Hawaii.
While the officer provided a written statement to officials, the FCC has thus far not been able to interview him and was “not in a position to fully evaluate the credibility of their assertion that they believed there was an actual missile threat and intentionally sent the live alert,” the report said.
An FCC official said Thursday that the worker, who has not been publicly identified, was not cooperating with the investigation.
The agency said the drill was “run without sufficient supervision” and that “there were no procedures in place to prevent a single person from mistakenly sending a missile alert to the State of Hawaii.”
“While such an alert addressed a matter of the utmost gravity, there was no requirement in place for a warning officer to double check with a colleague or get signoff from a supervisor before sending such an alert,” the report said.
Once the false alert was sent, the error was “worsened by the delay in authoritatively correcting the misinformation,” according to the report.
In a statement on the preliminary report, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the “two most troubling things” found by the investigation were that the emergency management agency did not “have reasonable safeguards in place to prevent human error from resulting in the transmission of a false alert” and that they “didn’t have a plan for what to do if a false alert was transmitted.”
“The public needs to be able to trust that when the government issues an emergency alert, it is indeed a credible alert,” he said. “Otherwise, people won’t take alerts seriously and respond appropriately when a real emergency strikes and lives are on the line.”