Missile-alert error reveals uncertainty about reactions

HONOLULU -- Residents and tourists alike remained rattled after the mistaken alert was blasted out to cellphones across the islands with a warning to seek immediate shelter and the ominous statement: "This is not a drill."

"Clearly there is a massive gap between letting people know something's coming and having something for them to do," Scheuer said Sunday. "Nobody knew what to do."

Lisa Foxen, a social worker and mother of two young children in east Honolulu, said the best thing to come out of the scare was that it pushed her family to come up with a plan if there is a real threat.

"I kind of was just almost like a deer in headlights," she said. "I knew what to do in a hurricane. I knew what to do in an earthquake. But the missile thing is new to me."

The blunder that caused more than a million people in Hawaii to fear that they were about to be struck by a nuclear missile fed skepticism about the government's ability to keep them informed in a real emergency.

"My confidence in our so-called leaders' ability to disseminate this vital information has certainly been tarnished," said Patrick Day, who sprang from bed when the alert was issued Saturday morning. "I would have to think twice before acting on any future advisory."

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.

Officials tried to assure residents there would be no repeat false alarms. 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.