A Windsor native has experienced the confusion surrounding a nuclear notification blunder in Hawaii.
An error by a technician at the U.S. state's Emergency Management Agency brought uncertainty and panic among Hawaiians early Saturday morning. Hawaii Governor David Ige confirmed that the alert was a false alarm and the islands were not under threat of a nuclear attack.
Harold Campbell is a real estate agent who has lived in Honolulu for 18 years. He grew up in Windsor, having attended grade school at John Campbell and high school at the former Forster and W.D. Lowe Secondary.
He tells BlackburnNewsWindsor.com that the alert came automatically via mobile devices, radio and television and interrupted the calm of a Hawaiian Saturday morning.
"My daughter came busting out of her room saying 'it says it's not a fake' and showed me her cell phone with the message on the warning," says Campbell.
The BBC reports that officials in Hawaii confirmed that the alert was sent at 8:07am Hawaii time, or 1:07pm Eastern time. Cell phone users received the following terse message:
"Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill."
Campbell says he's a calm person by nature, but he soon began hearing reports of people in panic across the islands.
"There were people putting their kids in sewers. They got out of their cars and pushed them into sewers thinking that would protect them from a missile," says Campbell. "It was really, really bizarre."
Officials in Hawaii say 38 minutes elapsed between the time of the false alert and the announcement that a nuclear-sized mistake had been made. Campbell says it felt longer than that, and he was able to quickly make contact with family and friends in Canada via phone and social media.
"A lot of people went on Twitter and stuff," says Campbell. "I was getting calls from Canada at the time from people we knew. I was like 'Don't worry, it's probably nothing.'"
Officials say the transmission of the message worked the way it was supposed to, but due to confusion taking place during a shift change at the EMA, someone pushed a wrong button, sending an actual alert instead of a test.
Campbell says emergency tests are done regularly not only because of Hawaii's proximity to possible nuclear devices from North Korea but also for the potential of earthquakes and hurricanes. Hawaii scheduled a nuclear test before Christmas, the first one since the end of the Cold War.
The U.S. government says they have ordered a full investigation.