Now today there is this story, Hawaii’s false missile alert sent by troubled worker who thought an attack was imminent, officials say.
As I was reading the linked story I'm thinking — they didn't announce, "This is an exercise" which is standard practice for any drill like the one described. But then — the story goes on to say that "This is an exercise" was announced. Yikes!
The "troubled" worker who sent the errant message has been fired. The Hawaii Emergency Management director has now resigned.
As I wrote earlier, "human sacrifice" is sometimes demanded for very public errors like this one. Does one jump or are they pushed into the volcano?
To say that this was "human error" is an understatement!
Here is a cautionary tale for others. It is possible that the employee who made the mistake was assigned to a duty officer position because of his limited talents as an emergency manager (I'm only guessing at this), which is not a great idea when you consider all that can go wrong. And, then there is the part where he has confused an exercise message for the real thing in the past.
Note to self: Take action, document and get rid of the person!
