The Voices of Fear

Blast and fallout map, 150kt weapon.

Hawaii Emergency Management Agency

Copyright © 2018

By Ralph F. Couey

By now, everyone knows what happened herein Hawai'i a week ago.  At 8:07 in the morning, a massive text push from the Hawai'i Emergency Management Agency (HEMA) lit up cell phones all over the 50th state, warning of an inbound missile and ending with the words, "This is no drill."  Although not backed up by any other authoritative source, and lacking the obvious confirming sirens, police cars, fire trucks, and scrambling military jets, most people took the text at its word, and panicked.  38 minutes later, another text push announced that the alert was a false alarm, but the damage had been done.

In the days since, the incident has been explored by the media and the legislature.  The Federal Communications Commission is also performing its own investigation.  And if the federal government wasn't in shutdown right now, there's no doubt that congress would be throwing its collective hat into the ring.  So far, it is what HEMA said it was all along, a mis-click on a computer monitor that instead of running a test, launched the state-wide alert.  The identity of the staffer who made the mistake is being protected by his agency, and thankfully so, since HEMA has received a lot of death threats aimed at him and his family.

For HEMA Director Vern Miyagi, it has been a long stretch of very long days.  Laudably, in the hours after the false alarm was processed, he bravely stood before the media and the public and took full responsibility for the error.  He and his staff had already moved to change the format of the buttons to make sure that the choice between test and real-world was clear, and that now it takes two people to login with credentials in order to run the test.  It's now almost completely unlikely that such an error will ever occur again.  

But those prompt and forthright actions have done little to settle the public's jangled nerves.  

Friday night, Director Miyagi and his staff met the public in a town hall meeting at an elementary school in Pearl City.  As we are nearby, I decided to walk over and sit in.

The parking lot was full and there were about 40-50 people in the gym/cafeteria when I arrived.  As I looked around, I could see pensive faces at every table.

Director Miyagi gave a full briefing, describing the threat from North Korea, along with powerpoint slides showing pictures of the two long-range ICBM's in the Hermit Kingdom's arsenal along with diagrams with circles describing the missiles' maximum ranges.  He then described the effects of the detonation of a 150kt device over Honolulu.  He pointed out the surprising figure of 80% to 90% survival rate of O'ahu's citizenry, although life post-strike would be less than idyllic.

In discussing the nature of the threat, Miyagi stated that the military has a lot of confidence in the effectiveness of the anti-ballistic missile batteries protecting the Hawai'ian Islands.  Also, the jury is still apparently out on how accurate the missiles really are.

On the dark side, he enumerated just how unprepared Hawai'i is for an attack, and its aftermath,  Since the end of the Cold War, there has been no federal funding for Civil Defense.  There are no evacuation or relocation plans; no designated fallout shelters stocked with 14 days of supplies.  Based on what happened on Saturday, there are apparently no education programs in place to teach people what to do and where to go.  

It was an excellent briefing, but cold comfort to those present.  When the floor was opened for questions, I could still hear the fear in their voices.  The questions were sincere, but it was plain that the level of knowledge was very low.  I grew up in the Cold War, and thanks to frequent government public service announcements, and a steady diet of input from my teachers in school, by the time I reached sixth grade, I was very conversant on nuclear attacks and the aftereffects.  That knowledge has managed to stay with me. But for everyone else born after 1970, this was a subject that was virtually ignored, so I understood the level of ignorance that exists.

Director Miyagi emphasized the importance of having a plan, and drilling that plan until everyone in the household knows instinctively what to do.  He handed out copies of a list of supplies that people should keep in their house, including a radio with extra batteries.  I could see relief on many faces as the presentation came to an end.  They now knew what to do.

Still, there were some gaps in what was presented.  For example, the electro-magnetic pulse generated by a nuclear blast cooks solid state circuitry, which is just about everything in a typical household.  But those commercial radio stations upon which everyone is going to be dependent post-strike, are apparently not shielded against EMP, they would be rendered mute.  Also, there seems to be an assumption that Kim Jon Un would send only one missile.  The reality is that he is more apt to send two, or three, or even four.  The military is mute on the ABM's ability to track and destroy multiple targets.  So all these projections are based on the detonation of one device.  An attack of more than one throws everything into the realm of the unknown.

The long-overdue education of Hawai'i's residents has begun.  Hopefully, people will take things seriously and begin to apply these instructions.  If this is done properly, then the next time the alert sounds, people will react in the way they're supposed to, informed, educated, and with their fear firmly in control.

If, on the other hand, the alert presages the real thing, then the sad fact is that all bets are off.