I was just reading the CNN account, and they seem to have asked the
right
questions. It's all about peoples reactions. what it should be
about is,
1 Where did the false report originate. If it was with an actual
responsible official that duty should be removed from them
immediately, if
not.
2 Who has the task, and or authorization, to actually send out this
message?
3 If it is an actual physical button, and not software, and it's must
likely software, what safeguards are there against a false alarm
being sent.
This shouldn't be a matter of pushing just one button or picking a
simple
software option from a menu. There should be either actual interlocks,
(can't actually be locked with a Key, because what if the person
with the
key isn't available), but there should be reasonable level of "are
you sure
you want to do this" after the option is chosen.
It seems to me that it would take a fair amount of effort to make this
happen, given reasonable safeguards. Someone should be fired
because they
ignored all of that.
On 1/14/2018 2:09 PM, Daniel J. Matyola wrote:
We are at the beginning of our annual sojourn on Maui.
Yesterday, at a little after 8:00 AM, we were having breakfast at a
lovely
beachfront restaurant All of a sudden my phone started to scream,
as did
those of my wife, my son and all the other patrons in the restaurant.
Picking up my phone, I read: "Emergency alert -- BALLISTIC MISSILE
THREAT
INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
I looked at it a few times, looked around the room at the other
patrons,
shrugged and went back to my breakfast. I mean, if it was real, what
could
one do? go to the basement, so the building could collapse on me?
Head
up
the mountain, where I would be more exposed to blast and radiation
from an
explosion at Pearl Harbor? Not much would help. After all, if one
is to
die, why not do it in paradise with a glass of fresh guava juice
and Eggs
Benedict?
All of the other patrons in the restaurant -- probably mostly
Canadians --
also shrugged, put their phones down, and continued with breakfast.
It took 38 minutes for the "authorities" to issue a retraction
through the
emergency system. My son was able to find a couple of reliable tweets
stating it was a false alarm within about 10 minutes, but still,
the delay
was inexcusable.
Elsewhere in Hawaii, there was real panic. In Honolulu, hospital
patients
were moved from their beds to the basement. tourists panicked on
Waikiki.
Children were in tears. The biggest problem is that, if there ever
is a
real alert, who would believe it.
An hour after the event, CNN was covering nothing else. The mistake
appears to have been human error, at the level of the state emergency
center in the crater of Diamond Head, and even the senior military on
Hawaii (who would be the first to know of a real attack) were
caught by
surprise and confused.
On Maui, most were more concerned with the high surf warnings than the
ballistic missile warning.
A bit of excitement in the midst of the serenity of paradise.
Dan Matyola
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola
--
America wasn't founded so that we could all be better.
America was founded so we could all be anything we damn well please.
- P.J. O'Rourke
