Hawaii’s residents receive false missile alert, triggering hysteria, evacuations

Residents of Hawaii received a false alert of an inbound ballistic missile strike on Saturday morning, leading to hysteria and evacuations in panic.

The alert was sent mistakenly sent by an employee at Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency, who reportedly ‘pushed the wrong button’ during a shift handover process.

The message, which read ‘Ballistic missile threat inboud to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.’, was received by mobile phone users at 8:07am local time (7:07pm CET).

Eighteen minutes later, an email was sent out saying that the alert was false, and a follow-up text message was sent to mobiles 38 minutes later, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Hawaii has such an alert system in place due to the threat posed by intercontinental ballistic missiles which could be sent by North Korea.

A federal investigation has been launched in the US state, and officials said they would work towards ensuring the incident never repeats itself.