Gabbard on False Missile Alarm: You Can Only Imagine the Panic, Terror, Chaos and Confusion
GEORGE STEHPANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: That was a scene of panic in Hawaii yesterday after the State Emergency System sent out this alert to mobile phones statewide. “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.” But that was a false alarm. Someone pushed the wrong button. There was no missile threat.
It took a full 38 minutes for the state to issue a civil emergency message retracting the false alert. Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard joins us now and Congresswoman, thank you for joining us this morning. As I just said, 38 minutes for the state to — to retract that false alarm. It only took you 12. You actually issued this tweet, want to put it up on the board right there. “Hawaii, this is a false alarm, there is no incoming missile to Hawaii and I confirmed with officials there is no incoming missile. “
How did you get the truth? Walk us through what happened.
REP. TULSI GABBARD (D), HAWAII: Well you can only imagine, George, the panic, the terror, the — the chaos and confusion that ensued when over a million people in Hawaii plus many visitors who were visiting Hawaii got that alert on their cell phones now understanding that they literally just have minutes.
Taking this threat seriously, they’ve got minutes to say goodbye to their loved ones, to find their loved ones, to try to find some kind of shelter somewhere, which there are no designated nuclear bomb shelters in Hawaii. I went through that same thing when I got that message on my phone, wondering where my family is, what they were doing. I immediately called Hawaii officials at civil defense, asked them what’s going on here and was told right away that there’s no incoming missile threat.
Someone pushed the wrong button. It was an inadvertent mistake.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But why did it take so long for them to retract it?
GABBARD: Well that’s what we’re still trying to get to the bottom of. It’s absolutely unacceptable and it’s an epic failure of leadership. Yes, it was — it was unacceptable that this went out in the first place, but the fact that it took so long for them to put out that second message, to calm people, to allay their fears that this was a mistake, a false alarm is something that has to be fixed, corrected with people held accountable.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you confident this won’t happen again?
GABBARD: We’ve got to do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t. Because there is so much at stake. You know, I got messages from people all across Hawaii throughout the day yesterday, just detailing what they went through. You know, a father sent me a message saying that his two children were in two different locations and he had to sit there and think which of his children his was going to choose to spend the last minutes of his life with.
There were so many people who went through this stark reality that — that I hope the rest of the country, that I hope people in Washington, leaders in Washington pay attention to, that this threat of nuclear war, nuclear attack is not a game. This is real and this is what the people of Hawaii just went through yesterday morning.
