In times of crisis, people look to their leadership for details and guidance. The residents of Hawaii went through a bit of an episode last week when a false emergency alert was sent out informing them of an incoming ballistic missile threat. To make things worse, the alert mentioned that “THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” As news rapidly spread on Twitter, many would have wondered why the governor’s Twitter account was silent at that critical time. It turns out, the governor couldn’t remember his Twitter password.
Governor David Ige had been informed about the false emergency alert merely two minutes after it was pushed out to everybody at 8:07 AM HST. However, the confirmation from his Twitter account that it was a false alarm didn’t come until 8:24 AM.
The governor has now confirmed that he wasn’t able to tweet out the clarification to his followers because he couldn’t get on Twitter. “I have to confess that I don’t know my Twitter account log-ons and the passwords, so certainly that’s one of the changes that I’ve made,” Ige said, adding that “I’ve been putting that on my phone so that we can access the social media directly.”
It was Rep. Tulsi Gabbard who after having confirmed with officials tweeted at 8:19 AM that there was no incoming ballistic missile threat and that it had been a false alarm. The state took 40 minutes to send out another alert to mobile phones clarifying that the previous alert had been false.
The FCC has since launched an investigation into the matter which has already been confirmed to have been caused by human error.
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