All-hazards preparedness improvement action plan and report
This report is a review of current emergency response systems, including notifications and warnings, in the state of Hawaii and makes recommendations for improvement. This report summarizes the approach used to conduct research, gather information, and organize information for decision making and problem-solving.
This report was commissioned in response to a false missile alert that was sent to the public in Hawaii. On January 13, 2018, the Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency’s (HI-EMA) State Warning Point erroneously activated a statewide Civil Danger Warning (CDW) ballistic missile alert through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (iPAWS). As designed, the iPAWS automatically distributed the CDW message through the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) to cellular phones and through the Emergency Alert System (EAS) to radio and television stations. Although efforts were taken to notify the public that the message was in fact a false missile alert, it took HI-EMA 38 minutes to send a second message on the WEA and EAS notifying the public that the first message was a false alert. HI-EMA staff had to create an event code to distribute the follow-on false alert message during the confusion that followed because that capability was not a part of the original alert system. The failure to have systems in place in response to a false alert was the primary contributing factor for the delay and resultant internal and external communication failures.