PhotoThe leader of the Hawaii National Guard told state lawmakers on Friday that he informed the governor that a panic-inducing missile alert was a false alarm two minutes after it had been sent to cellphones statewide. Amid the chaos and confusion, it took officials 38 minutes to send a second message saying the original message was an error. “The false alarm has identified so many gaps in the system,” Della Au Belatti, the majority leader of the Hawaii State House, said in a phone interview on Saturday. General Logan, who also directs the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, learned the alert was a false alarm after speaking with the United States Pacific Command, an agency spokesman, Richard Rapoza, said on Saturday. It took another 11 minutes for the emergency management agency to tweet that there was “NO missile threat to Hawaii.” Mr. Ige reiterated that message in his own tweet four minutes later.

Source: New York Times January 21, 2018 01:52 UTC