United states. This was a massive false alarm triggered by frankly somebody pushing the wrong button on the state side. Turns out we were actually in that very room just yesterday reporting on a assignment for nbc about what would happen in the event of a Nuclear Attack on hawaii. I want to show you that footage now, david. Take a look. This gentleman in the state warning point, state warning officers will receive a call from Pacific Command on a secure line which ill show you in a second. That comes in and they have a few, about a minute or two to determine the accuracy of the call. Authenticate it and make a decision to activate the statewide siren system. Reporter so the question, david, is, is it one of those state warning officers . Might it be one of those state warning officers pointed out to me yesterday within that bunker that might have inadvertently pushed the wrong button triggering a text alert to hundreds of people, if not a Million People on the island of hawaii, particularly at oahu. We were on the ocean, 10 00 a. M. When the alert went out and did not hear sirens. There are 394 sirens, situated throughout the islands of hawaii that are supposed to go off in the event of an actual Nuclear Missile attack inbound to hawaii. Of course, the full system was not activated. The text message part of the system, ive seen some reports of the television alert also being activated. I talked to the center from hawaii earlier on msnbc. He says million until further notice, like to see a suspension of the system that tests those Nuclear Warning sirens until they can figure out what happened, why it happened and who set off the alarm and maybe in the press conference well get those answers. The governor scheduled to hold a News Conference at any hoemt. Wh moment. What about the degrees things have changed. Missile test after missile test. Guam and other territories were within range of a north korean missile. How has the conversation changed in honolulu, in diamondhead crater how real a threat this is . Reporter the most urgent threats, frankly, david, to the people here on the Hawaiian Islands are hurricanes and tsunami. Thats the normal function of the hawaii Emergency Management department. They frankly put the risk of an attack from north korea, the administrato administrator, at a pretty low level. Because theyve been monitoring the continued testing of shortrange missiles and icbms by kim jongun of north korea, started reactivating a cold war era siren system that alerts people here on the Hawaiian Islands of an incoming missile from north korea or otherwise. Its something they have, again, started to reactivate just over the last couple months. Theyre taking it more seriously, even though they put the risk of this happening as a relatively low level. Taking it seriously. Working on every day. That room is manned 24 hours a day, because of the catastrophic natural disasters they may face here in hawaii. Not top of the list but an important part of the funkds f of hawaii Emergency Management and the went very badly wrong today. In honolulu, an exclusive report in diamondhead crater. And Kelly Odonnell, whats the lettest weve heard, how the president is following this matter . Reporter we have a little more detail, david, how the president was briefed. Were told the chief of staff john kelly, the National Security adviser h. R. Mcmaster and his deputy were the individuals with the president telling him what played out in hawaii. From the white house today, limited information. They told us about the president being notified. Explained that this was two their understanding a false alarm at the state level, and thats been about it. The president spent part of his day at one of his golf courses. Played coug eed golf. Had a separate meeting about nafta, the mexican trade negotiation, and what went wrong as a state level, we understand it to be a state responsibility at this point in hawaii. No discussion of the concerns, hawaiians felt during that intervening period nothing else. The president has used twitter to talk about one of his frequent concerns of late. A book written about him thats gotten a lot of attention, that he criticized, but no use of his twitter feed to speak directly to the people of hawaii or those more broadly concerned how an error like this with a push alert could be such a concern. We dont know when or if the president will Say Something directly or how the white house will handle this going forward. It appears to be a statelevel function. Federal government doesnt always comment on specific state functions, but in this instance, given all the other larger political and National Security implications, there might be an opportunity for the president to say more. He talks about the job of president being to secure the american people, being first and foremost. In this case, not an actual danger but perceived danger, still nothing from the white house on that. A simple set of facts. Briefed. Said it was something we should refer to the department of defense. This was a statelevel issue. Limited info coming from the white house while the president s here at his palm beach home. David . And Kelly Odonnell traveling with the president. And to courtney covers the pentagon. What have we heard about what happened . Squarely within theirwheelhouse just a moment here. Were seeing the governor there david ige, governor of hawaii, approaching the podium in honolulu speaking at the Honolulu Department of Emergency Management. What he has to say. Here he is, governor of hawaii. Good afternoon. Today is a day that most of us will never forget. A day when many in our community thought that our Worst Nightmare might actually be happening. A day when many frantically tried to think about the things that they would do if a Ballistic Missile launch would happen. I know firsthand that what happened today was totally unacceptable and many in our community were deeply affected by this, and im sorry for that pain and confusion that anyone might have experienced. I am, too, very angry and disappointed that this happened. We are doing everything that we can immediately to ensure that it never happens again. You know, we have spent the morning with general logan and those involved with Emergency Management and their teams, and i have directed them to make the changes necessary to ensure that a false alarm will not happen. We are working to evaluate everything in the sequence of todays activities to make sure that we are prepared and the procedures are changed so that a Single Person will not be able to make an error that triggers another false alarm. With that, id like to turn it over to vern miyagi to go through todays news. Im vern miyagi, administrator of hawaii Emergency Management agency. I deeply apologize for the trouble and heartbreak that we caused today. Weve spent the last few months trying to get ahead of this whole threat to provide as much notification to the public. Today was something i regret, because i accept responsibility for this. This is my team. We made a mistake. Were going to take processes and study so that this doesnt happen again. Let me go over, you were distributed today a press release i believe heard copy. A timeline. Id like to spend a few minutes just going over that timeline. A 0 085 this morning, my 24 7 operating group did a change of shift preparation, and the new incoming shift will do a check, a test, of the Ballistic Missile operation check list. At 0 805 this started. 0 807 is when the trigger was pulled on the test. The wrong button was pushed on this test. It went into an actual event versus a test. At 8 10 a. M. , we, of course, got messages on our system. The telephones and so on and calls, that this had gone out, and at that point in time, we started the recall, the cancellation process. At 8 13 a. M. , state warning issued a cancellation of a civil danger warning message, and whatthis does is prevent anymore messages going out. It doesnt issue a separate message canceling it. It just stops the messages from going out. At 8 20 a. M. , the Management Agency issued a public notification of cancellation on facebook and twitter. 8 24 a. M. , governor ige retweets or message for cancellation notice. At 8 30 a. M. , governor posts cancellation notification on the Facebook Page and 8 45 a. M. , after getting authorization from fema integrated public alert and warning system, a Civil Emergency message was issued verbally alerting people a missile was not incoming and this was a false alarm. And thats where we were as the end of today. As far as the way ahead, i have to emphasize that this is what has been happening over the last few months, and our focus has been getting the notification out to the public. We have to work on more, the cancellation notice in this event. Our focus now, of course, is not to have anymore false alarms going out, and by doing this, we are working on procedures that have already been implemented, first of all, the governor has directed that we old off anymore tests until we get this squared away. What has already been put in place, twoperson rule that during a drill, there will always be two people there before the button is pushed, for both drills and for the actual alert. The other point is the cancellation message. We will have a cancellation template that already been inserted whereby the cancellation message prescripted to go out saying its a false alarm and there is no missile inbound. I have to emphasize that at 8 10 a. M. , right after this went out, general logan called Pacific Command to confirm there was no missile inbound, and that was our priority first to make sure that word got out. The other thing we need to do is expand the notifications protocols to the governor, the mayors, counties, all understand that this is a false we need to make more contacts to notify that this was a false alarm. The other point is contact with the press and the media to make sure this goes out right away also. Again, i apologize for this. This is my responsibility, and my team. Please, keep in mind that, again, the threat is there. If this comes out youre going to have 12 to 13 minutes of warning for actual event and please take this to heart. Again, i apologize for whats happened. Alohaloha. Obviously a day well never forget. Like everyone else, were extremely concerned that this happened. But also encouraged, and im very encouraged, that well have all of the key decisionmakers and agencies now coming together, have a serious dialogue to ensure that this never, ever happens again. Upon hearing the notice we immediately reached out to airports, harbors, our ten Global Partners in many instances because of the time difference, we were able to message very quickly that this was a false alarm. And hopefully mitigate any potential damp there. Damage there. We spoke to all island chapters industry stakeholders obviously very, very concerned and we assured them that as i mentioned earlier, there will be very serious dialogue between all decisionmakers to ensure this doesnt happen again. The important thing, i think, is that for us, the health, safety and welfare of our visitors and our residents alike is always, always top priority. And were going to do everything that we can do to assure that is there. And the message i would like to be very clear speaking to Global Partners is that hawaii is open for business. Is still perceived as the most safe, clean, welcoming destination in the world. And im confident we will continue that message. Thank you. With that we open it up to your questions. Governor, never say never. In a day of technology where you can why rely on hand audio notification . I think we have a combination, the notification process is a variety of different mechanisms. We have the sirens, you know, we have cell phones today. We have internet and social media mechanisms. We do know we immedianeed to beo broadcast messages through all platforms and thats what the intention was. Theres was no automated way to send a false alarm cancellation. We had to initiate a manual process, and that was why it took a while to notify everyone. Isnt there a way to connect it to when you have such things as where it could come out that fast, much faster, wouldnt that be a better option . Certainly, we will be looking at weve already implemented some actions to speed the process so that the public would be notified faster, but we are evaluating all of the processes that we currently have to ensure that we can provide the notice to the public as soon as possible. To clarify. The 38 minutes that transpired before the initial alert and the false alarm notification was the result of the time that you guys needed to manually take control of the no. A couple things. If you look at the timeline, certainly we had sent notification that it was a false alarm much earlier than the 30 minutes. Right. The 38minute interval is really the interval that we had to manually go through the process to provide notification on the smartphones and cell phones. We did have other notification that occurred much, much sooner than that. Right. On twitter and facebook, but everyone is hosting on media platforms relying on the devices or sirens, in some cases did go off in certain communities . Yes. The sirens were separate and a few went off, but most of them did not, because theyre not involve ared with this test. So clarification then is why were those sirens triggered . When you guys were already issuing a correction that it was a false alarm . We have to check on that. Thats how we do the monthly tests, but the drill that was done this morning was only for the Emergency Alert system, which is a tv radio. The emergency system, your cell phones. Is the real alert supposed to work, then, where you would get this notification and then are the sirens supposed to go after that . Correct. Because this is an internal test, a drill, we dont want the sirens to go off publicly. So why did the sirens go off . We have to review that. We have to test. Again, its an internal drill. Sirens are not supposed to go off outside. This is to make sure personnel know exactly what prauocess to follow to initiate if it was a real evencht and the wrong button was pushed. Clarification. There are buttons on a panel. One person pushes a certain button and theres no sort of a safety guard where are you sure you want to push that button . Its a screen. More like a mouse click. Its a screen. A test button and an actual the wrong button was pressed. That button is pushed. Thats it . It goes through. Thats correct. I was going to say the old process, no redundancy. Weve implemented changes already to ensure it becomes a redundant process so it wont be a single individual. Theyll be at least two people that would be involved here to initiate the alert. You mean since this morning you implemented that . Yes. Thats correct. Could clarify, someone sent out a massive alert saying this is not a drill. Shelter in place immediately. By the time the next alert went out to the masses and those 38 minutes passed, you guys obviously already clarified it was a false alarm but still sirens started going off. Youre saying thats on a separate system. So who made the call to initiate or authorize the use of the sirens . No one had authorized the use of sirens. The sirens should not, and we dont know, but we will find out. What is the procedure . The steps, what is the procedure when testing . The procedure for the test is that, in a real event, notification from your specific command. Go to the test as far as activating the computer screen and the program as far as that would activate the warnings and alerts. So the process of our test is that we simulate a notification from pacom. No notification from pacom came. We simulate that. Based on that simulation our staff at the state warning point will open up the screen, go through the checklist and make the initiation. There is a again, its a human error. There is a screen that says, are you sure you want to do this . Okay . Thats already in place. Now, we have one person, human error, and that thing was pushed anyway. So there was by having redundancy also pressed yes . Yes. There was a fewstep process, press yes in both situations . Right. So having redundancy, two people, 12 to 13 minutes to alert the public. How mucho much of a delay no delay. Right now the process would be ots, the person in charge of the warning point, that shift, would, the one to push it or oversee making sure there are two people there when pushing the button. There was a redundancy in place then. Someone clicks, sends out a mass message and someone also clicks to say, yes . Its the same person. Can you explain why, then, he did it twice . I cant explain that. Like i said, its a human error that were going to fix. We understand its a mrs. Take. What a mistake. What are the consequences of the mass hysteria . The consequences are obviously bad. Im walking on credibility now because we work sewed hard to get this in place and i want to tell the public. A mistake on our part but dont let that stop as far as preparation and warning time if this happens for real. So in my case, watch the news now. Theyre talking. Kim jongun is talking to the south. Tensions are going, getting better. When i heard this this morning, i thought it has to be a false alarm. Thats not happening. Outreach to public and training is, keep informed whats going on in the tension between the two countries, and keep monitor that so, again when i saw this today, when i heard this today i thought something was wrong. A false alarm. Mainly because the tensions werent there to start Something Like this. Again, thats again, this should not have happened and were going to work hard this is not going to happen again as the governor said, and were going to work on the cancellation and notification process to be much better so this doesnt go through again what we went through this morning. Consequences . The individual responsible, will they have consequences . The consequences are, there will be, of c