Coloradans Recall Fear, Panic In Hawaii After Missile False Alarm
DENVER (CBS4)- Coloradoans returning from Hawaii recalled fear, panic and some touching moments after an alert, warning of a missile attack, was mistakenly transmitted.
The alert read, "Emergency Alert: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
"We thought it was the end for about 10 minutes," said Doriane Tippet of Fort Collins.
She said she was on her way to a museum on a bus.
Tippet said the driver pulled over and informed his passengers they had 15 minutes to find shelter. She went to a church. After the incident ended she returned to the bus. She was seated by a boy.
"He was just sobbing and said 'I want to be with my parents.' He was about 13 or 14 years old so I put my arm around him and he put his arm around me."
Her husband John was back at the hotel he got the alert, "So I called her and told her I loved her, just in case, you know."
The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency has said that it 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 Saturday.
The blunder caused more than a million people in Hawaii to fear that they were about to be struck by a nuclear missile.
Some people huddled in closets others went into manholes.
Leolani Meyers, who attends The University of Colorado in Denver, was at home on Oahu when her mother came in.
"We were sleeping, me and my sister, and she started going inside our room waking us up. We were panicking and started screaming."
It took 38 minutes for the corrected text message to be sent out. So what do you do in that time?
John Tippet said after calling his wife he went back to bed, "There's no place you can take shelter if you have an incoming nuke, certainly a nuclear bomb, you can't take shelter anywhere so I just stayed in bed."
CBS4's Rick Sallinger is a Peabody award winning reporter who has been with the station more than two decades doing hard news and investigative reporting. Follow him on Twitter @ricksallinger.
