Warning!

In the twelve years I shuffled in and out of elementary, junior high, and high school, I willingly participated in air raid drills (in which we were told, to the amusement of all, that covering our head with our arms would protect us from nuclear fallout and tumbling detritus following an atomic bomb landing nearby) and fire drills, in which we tested our ability to evacuate a non-burning school building, in case the day ever came that we had to evacuate a burning one.

In fact, by senior year, so adept was I at clearing out of a building that I would just keep on going, establishing a remote headquarters at Gino's on York Rd.

But I always did, and still do, take emergency warnings seriously. Lives and limbs depend on people receiving and following evacuation warnings.

However, this system gets ruined when people no longer take the warnings seriously, and the chances are, next time that the state of Hawaii gets cellphone and television warnings about incoming ballistic missiles, people will shrug and go back to their surfing and luau-ing, and ignore the whole thing.  And that could be tragic, for obvious reasons.

You know what we're talking about here -  last Saturday, everyone in 5-0 land was all torn up when a mistaken alert was blasted out across the islands, warning all to seek immediate shelter with the dire words: "This is not a drill."

And it turned out that it was not a North Korean missile strike, cleverly timed to coincide with that rare moment when our commander-in-chief is out playing golf, or a bomb sent over from any of the other rogue nations that hold us in such high esteem. 

Too little, too late

No, just like 99% of bagel-slicing injuries, this was 100% self-inflicted.  Some bozo at the state's Emergency Management Agency created his/her own emergency by "pressing the wrong button."

Of course, there will now be congressional investigations, state inquiries, television news reports, and deep discussions at breakfast tables across the nation.  People will wonder why such a commotion can be set off by one person pushing one button at the wrong time, and why it took 38 minutes to tell people that the whole doggone thing was just a merry mix-up at shift change on a Saturday morning. The HEMA people have changed their protocols, and it now requires TWO people to screw things up royally, instead of just one.

And they say they are working on ways to cancel false alarms, a process described as being similar to getting a cat back in a bag, or putting toothpaste back in a tube.

But it might already be too late to restore public confidence in the warning alarms.

Patrick Day, island resident, says now, "My confidence in our so-called leaders' ability to disseminate this vital information has certainly been tarnished. I would have to think twice before acting on any future advisory."

Here is how people acting on this particular advisory, according to news report.  5,000 people called 911 in that confused hour, which is going to tax any emergency communications system horribly. Some people opened manhole covers and deposited their children inside (bad idea), some took to the bathtubs to hide and pray, drivers left their cars behind and sheltered in a tunnel, and some just sat back to await the inevitable.

You know what else is inevitable? Another problem, unless the people in charge learn to take this procedure seriously. People are understandably nervous, given the nuclear tension in the world, and the tension afoot is in the hands of people who should know better how to operate the response system.