14 DAY TRIAL // Could this whole blunder get any worse? As if the simple fact that someone accidentally hit the wrong option and sent everyone in Hawaii a fake missile attack warning wasn’t enough, Governor David Ige now says he needed 17 minutes to post on Twitter because… he didn’t know his account password.
As a summary, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency submitted the fake ballistic missile threat at 8.07 am Pacific time on January 13, while Ige tweeted the four words, “there is NO missile threat,” at 8.24 am the same day. The second alert sent to phones landed 38 minutes after the false alarm.
Ige told the Honolulu Star Advertiser that he configured Twitter on his phone to be able to post faster, though hopefully, he won’t need to refute another fake missile warning.
“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. I’ve been putting that on my phone so that we can access the social media directly,” he said, before adding that his reaction time might have been increased because he was also making calls to local authorities.
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Shortly after posting the no missile tweet, Ige released several statements, including an apology for Hawaii’s residents, all of them on Twitter, probably trying to show everyone that he actually recovered his account password.
“On behalf of the State of Hawai‘i, I deeply apologize for this false alert that created stress, anxiety and fear of a crisis in our residents and guests,” he tweeted. “I can personally assure each and every resident and visitor that steps have already been taken by the Hawai‘i Emergency Management Agency to ensure that a situation of this type never happens again.”
Right now, both the Twitter and the Facebook accounts are being handled by Ige’s staff, but apps have also been installed on his phone so the governor can personally post on social media.
Let’s just hope he won’t get hacked and another missile warning would be delivered on Twitter… Thank God he only has 7,000 followers.