Hawaii Panics After Alert About Incoming Missile Is Sent in Error
- 6 years ago
Hawaii Panics After Alert About Incoming Missile Is Sent in Error
But Mr. Perry went on to speculate what might have happened if such a warning had come “during the Cuban Missile Crisis or a Mideast war?”
The United States faces an especially difficult problem today, not just because of tense relations with North Korea
but also because of growing fears inside the military about the cyber vulnerability of both the nuclear warning system and nuclear control systems.
As a chain of islands, Hawaii is subject to all kinds of threats — hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis — but officials have made clear
that none is more urgent now than the threat of an attack by North Korea, given how little time there would be between an alert and the detonation of a bomb.
Hawaii has been on high emotional alert — it began staging monthly air-raid drills, complete with sirens, in December — since President Trump
and Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, began exchanging nuclear threats.
By Adam Nagourney, David E. Sanger and Johanna Barr
An early-morning emergency alert mistakenly warning of an incoming ballistic missile attack was dispatched to cellphones across Hawaii on Saturday, setting off widespread panic in a state
that was already on edge because of escalating tensions between the United States and North Korea.
“I mean, there was no intel.”
At Konawaena High School on the Island of Hawaii, where a high school wrestling championship was taking place, school officials, more accustomed to responding
to alerts of high surf or tsunamis, moved people to the center of the gym as they tried to figure out how to take shelter from a missile.
But Mr. Perry went on to speculate what might have happened if such a warning had come “during the Cuban Missile Crisis or a Mideast war?”
The United States faces an especially difficult problem today, not just because of tense relations with North Korea
but also because of growing fears inside the military about the cyber vulnerability of both the nuclear warning system and nuclear control systems.
As a chain of islands, Hawaii is subject to all kinds of threats — hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis — but officials have made clear
that none is more urgent now than the threat of an attack by North Korea, given how little time there would be between an alert and the detonation of a bomb.
Hawaii has been on high emotional alert — it began staging monthly air-raid drills, complete with sirens, in December — since President Trump
and Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, began exchanging nuclear threats.
By Adam Nagourney, David E. Sanger and Johanna Barr
An early-morning emergency alert mistakenly warning of an incoming ballistic missile attack was dispatched to cellphones across Hawaii on Saturday, setting off widespread panic in a state
that was already on edge because of escalating tensions between the United States and North Korea.
“I mean, there was no intel.”
At Konawaena High School on the Island of Hawaii, where a high school wrestling championship was taking place, school officials, more accustomed to responding
to alerts of high surf or tsunamis, moved people to the center of the gym as they tried to figure out how to take shelter from a missile.