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WHEN JONATHAN SCHEUER got an alert on his phone of a ballistic missile headed for Hawaii, he and his family didn’t know what to do. They went to their guest bedroom, then decided it would be safer on the ground floor of their Honolulu home.
“What do we do?” he wondered. “Where do we go?”
People should immediately seek shelter in a building “or other substantial structure,” once an attack-warning siren sounds, according to guidance the state distributed previously. The state recommends having 14-day survival kit of food and water.
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.
Reassigned
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.
The error sparked a doomsday panic across the islands known as a laid-back paradise. Parents clutched their children, huddled in bathtubs and said prayers. Students bolted across the University of Hawaii campus to take cover in buildings.
Drivers abandoned cars on a highway and took shelter in a tunnel. Others resigned themselves to a fate they could not control and simply waited for the attack.
The 911 system for the island of Oahu was overwhelmed with more than 5,000 calls. There were no major emergencies during the false alarm, Mayor Kirk Caldwell said.
President Donald Trump said Sunday the federal government will “get involved,” but didn’t release details.
An investigation into what went wrong was underway at the Federal Communications Commission, which sets rules for wireless emergency alerts sent by local, state or federal officials to warn of the threat of hurricanes, wildfires, flash flooding and to announce searches for missing children.
The state of Hawaii “did not have reasonable safeguards or process controls in place to prevent the transmission of a false alert”, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement, calling the mistake “absolutely unacceptable”.
“False alerts undermine public confidence in the alerting system and thus reduce their effectiveness during real emergencies,” he said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen urged Americans not to lose faith in their government.
“I would hate for anybody not to abide by alerts and warnings coming from government systems,” Nielsen said on Fox News Sunday.
”They can trust government systems. We test them every day. This is a very unfortunate mistake, but these alerts are vital. Seconds and minutes can save lives.”
With mobile phones ubiquitous, wireless alerts can quickly disseminate information to a wide number of users, but there have been concerns about creating a panic if they are sent too broadly.
Authorities were criticised for not sending an alert to mobile phones when fires ripped through Northern California in October, killing 40 people.
Officials had decided not to use the system because they couldn’t target them precisely enough and feared a wider broadcast would lead to mass evacuations, including people not in danger, snarling traffic that would hamper firefighting and rescues efforts.
Sirens
Saturday’s mistake was not the first for the state’s warning system. During a test last month, 12 of the state’s 386 sirens played an ambulance siren.
In the tourist hub of Waikiki, the sirens were barely audible, prompting officials to add more sirens and reposition ones already in place.
People need to step back from questioning who pushed the button and why and focus on military de-escalation, Scheuer said.
The false alarm triggered a broader discussion about national security at a time when North Korea has been flexing its muscles by launching test missiles and bragging about its nuclear capability.
Its leader, Kim Jong Un, has also exchanged insults on Twitter with President Donald Trump about their arsenals.
The standoff has whipped up nuclear fears on Hawaii and led the islands to revive Cold War-era siren tests that drew international attention.
Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii Democrat, said officials should be held accountable for the “epic failure of leadership” behind the warning.
She said the nuclear threat underscored the need for Trump to meet with Kim to work out differences without preconditions.
“The people of Hawaii are paying the price now for decades of failed leadership in this country” by setting “unrealistic preconditions”, she said.
The leaders of this country need to experience that same visceral understanding of how lives are at stake.
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Burden of proof .’ i didn’t place that in my bin ,Must have happened when it was sitting on the public road ‘ can’t be enforced
Producers of products must be made to use all recyclable packaging in what ever goods they produce. The end user is always getting screwed. If all packaging was fully recyclable this would eliminate this issue.
It’s also totally impractical. All the bins get chucked into the same compartment on the truck! They may spot something sitting on the top of your rubbish but that’s the best they could do. Will they look through your rubbish as it falls from the bin into the truck?? So stupid… SAD!
Another objectionable attempt by this off shore controlled company to heap extract more revenue from this privatisation mess.
My bins have to go out at night for 6 am collections. Many people have their bins out front 24/7.
I have actually seen bin toppers putting bags into bins awaiting pick up! One individual wheels his shopping trolley around & tips refuse into bins along his daily walk route!
It is a widespread practice.
The operating Companies should tender by area, to service 100% of households & business within service zones. Any addresses without service agreements are immediately exposed for investigation & enforcement. Fewer trucks, lower traffic congestion & emissions. Common sense, not very evident in this privatisation.
As for pricing by weight, this penalises family households & should be banned.
Let Greyhound & any other refuse outfits spend some of their huge revenues on public education on segregation & recycling, instead of harassing the householders who have actually signed up with them.
@William well put. Why has their never been anyone fined for not being signed up to a bin company? A family I know have never paid for bins and laugh at us who do
When did the Irish ever get a good deal from privatisation of a service. It always leads to degradation of service and increase in costs for end users.
@brian boru:
Yeah, just remember back to how good things were when Eircom had a monopoly on the telephones and the ESB with the electricity. High prices and poor service. Now we have choice and competition on pricing with organisations constantly trying to offer a better product or service to win our business.
@Nick Allen: Take a look at your next phone and ESB bill and ask yourself are you getting value or just paying for armies of marketing teams to sell you the same product from multiple vendors – ESB and Eircome
Bin all these moneygrabbing private companies and lets have our old council collections again.
The more people are ripped off the more flytipping will take place.
@brian boru:
I use Virgin for my phone & broadband, I have a 360MB contract and if I connect by ethernet I get a download of about 380 and and upload of about 50, by Wifi I get download of 300 and upload of about 35. I also get all my calls free and this includes landline, mobile and international to about 50+ countries which includes UK, America, Australia and most of Europe. I have online access for my billing and an APP on my phone to let me use my landline account from anywhere in the world when i am on Wifi. On top of this I have a mobile ph account for 20euro a month which gives me free calls, unlimited texts and lots of download over the 4G network.
I happily pay 60 euro for this landline & broadband service plus the extra 20 for the mobile. I think this is very good value
How much did greyhound pay for this ridiculous article? “Forced” to hire 25 staff me bollix.
So there saying food waste can’t be put in black bins now. Taught brown bin were optional
Well it would be great to see my bin supplier oxygen actually offer a brown bin.
I dont condemn putting the wrong rubbish in the wrong bins but its a business idea from greyhound. Every person they try to fine will just switch company. And im sure greyhounds competitors love hearing this news. P.S Bin your rubbish responsibly.
You don’t ‘condone ‘
@Alan mulvey:@Alan mulvey: EU law, food waste must go in brown bin or be composted.
The bstards should be buying the stuff off us. The money they make on it.
Bin companies have some neck on them. They want us the customers to do all the donkey work for them, ie sorting out the normal waste, recyclable waste, food waste ect. Then they charge us an arm and a leg to take it away, pay the staff peanuts, and get paid from some company on China or wherever for the recyclable material. Are you sure now there nothing else we could do for you? All this nonsense does is encourage more people to fly tip or burn the rubbish in their back garden.
Mick , don’t forget to wash out all those jars , pots , containers for them too.Would the like us to stick a broom in our hole and wash their trucks whilst they’re outside the door too ?
Don’t be putting ideas in their head Diarmuid.
@mickmc: So True. That is why their is a surge in stove buying. People burning their rubbish and destroying the air quality because of profiteering.
People should have done more to protect our public bin service.
Remember they sent people to jail for protesting against privatisation.
This is yet another example of privatisation screwing the public.
The reason for privatisation was to save the councils money, there are now 10 times the number of vehicles using the roads and the impact on the environment is immeasurable.
The cost of illegal dumping is in the millions every year.
Great work by senior short sighted civil servants yet again.
Simpler times when we had one bin to rule them all
@Panem et Circenses:
Yes the simpler times when we had huge landfills and no recycling and just dumped everything together. Where has it all gone wrong
Next they’ll be measuring our farts to check that they’re within acceptable methane limits.
If they’re able to justify hiring 25 extra staff just to do this, it must be a very profitable idea.
What Greyhound really mean is that the collection charges will be going up no matter what you do. How can Greyhound state that it’s the customer and not his neighbours putting the wrong rubbish in the bins. Are Greyhound going to supply each and every household security cameras and or individual locks on the bins?
Paul Mc agreed, there are people on our road who habitually put their rubbish in other people’s bins, presumable because their landlords don’t provide enough bins for the flats they’re in.
Fart cops, fart cops. Whatcha gonna do, Whatcha gonna do when they come for you.
Way to encourage fly tipping, Greyhound! Your prices are already high, now you’re going to impose an additional cost to cover the 25 new “bin inspectors” and then even more of a penalty if you fail? No, thanks- I see why people flytip and just spread rubbish all over.
Hey Garreth, just wondering if you could clear something up? What’s the going rate for a “journalist” to publish a press release with a few tweaks and to make it look like a news article, but without any research or criticism? Asking for a friend.
I refuse to use the brown bin for food because it’s disgusting. That little caddy you get for the kitchen is a magnet for ants and fruit flies. Manky!
@Maria Hickey-Fagan:
If you clean it out regularly then you may find the problem with ants etc disappears!
Smart @rse. Of course I cleaned it regularly. During summer months the problem did not go away. Especially the fruit flies.
I’m not with Greyhound, but could you line it with a plastic bag?
I really hope people vote with there feet on this and don’t wait around to be fined 30 euro for a genuine mistake or someone who has passed your bin and discided to put something in it . The journey has made them look like they are doing the right thing .but in real life greyhound are paying 25 people to go around and take pictures of stuff in bins and leave it to be collected and after its collected then they send out the fines. instead of marking bin not to collected …. I rang the staff in greyhound the other day and they where not very helpfull sounded like they have a lot of people on about the same thing .
just put it all in general
they can sort it at depot.
it’s their business to sort it and recycle it, it’s how they make money. but they have convince most of us to do their work for them
and now they want to fine you for not helping them.
Our local bin company Greenstar just dump the recyclable bin in to the truck with the general waste. I asked the lads at the back and they made a joke and laughed.
Report them Carol.
Looks like a lot of people here want the “right to be a lazy git” and put messy unsorted rubbish into any bin they choose. Maybe it’s just a lack of understanding of just how expensive it is to sort this mess once it’s made. Once the mess is made someone has to pay for it. Either the messer pays in fines or the bills go up of the taxpayer/council pays.
IMO it makes makes sense for each individual user to sort their own mess and if they don’t they should be paying someone else to do it. Ireland has signed up to all these environmental regulations and there’s no point in pretending we can just chuck an unsorted mess of rubbish into a landfill like days of old. Maybe if we had incineration we could be lazy and chuck everything into 1 or 2 bins, but in the main we don’t so we can’t. This anger at bin companies for implementing common sense rhymes with the anger with charging for excessive use of water.
Greyhound looking for another way to implement price increases
Ha ha Dubs
Ha Ha Dirty lazy dumb Dubs.. want everything given and some else to pay. Little sense of individual responsibility.
I suppose Greyhound will find 99% of customers will be offenders. Jaysus thats a handy few bob.
Bin cops, bin cops. Whatcha gonna do, Whatcha gonna do when they come for you.
I know of a household in riverside estate Galway who doesn’t have bins and put there waste including fire ash into other people’s bins and over the wall at end of estate.lf they are reading this be warned your time is up.
Greyhound has been robbing its customers for years forcing deposits not even asking if I wanted to put a deposits down just took it And now it comes and attack s its customers again who in there right mind would pay this fine or stay with them I pay you Do what you want with it pi…… off And I pay monthly for services good bye greyhound
About time
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