Some thoughts after the Hawaii missle scare

A few days ago someone accidentally sent a real alert about a missile strike heading towards Hawaii. The latest thing I read about this incident was that there was a menu of items to select from. Some of those items on the menu used plain English, some used government acronyms.

It should be realized that if there is a way to screw something up, someone will find a way of doing it. This is not the first time something like this has happened. Apparently someone got confused and selected the wrong item.

Years ago, the government system for warning against missile attacks was tested every Saturday morning. A message would be sent out on AP and UPI news teletypes. Radio stations would check the message, which consisted of two words, with the list of test phrases. If they matched, the system was presumed to be working.

Radio stations have, or used to have, a red envelope. If a message came down and it was not the test time, or if the message did not match the test list, someone at the radio station was to open the red envelope. Inside the red envelope was a list of words. If the message on the teletype matched the words in the red envelope then the message was authenticated as a real alert and the system was to be activated.

One Saturday morning in 1971 someone at the control center "pushed the wrong button," sending the real message. No one acted on the alert, figuring that someone must have pushed the wrong button as it came at the same time as the weekly test. Now if someone at a small mom and pop radio station in Kentucky knew the test happened at the same time every Saturday morning, don't you think that the Kremlin knew the test happened at the same time every Saturday morning? There was a reason the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on a Sunday morning.

In 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (the "World Series" quake) struck the San Francisco area.



Many people felt that it showed the weakness of the old Emergency Broadcast System. There was a limited number of people who could activate the EBS system and no one activated it after the earthquake. Because of that a new system was designed. This new system, the Emergency Alert System (EAS) was designed to overcome those weaknesses. Many more people were now in a position to activate the system. The new system would automatically take control of "downstream" broadcasters rather than rely on someone knowing what they were doing at those stations. (A few years ago, someone activated a test of the system but forgot to release it for several hours, meaning all radio stations in the chain were stuck relaying the primary station's audio that entire time.)

So radio stations had to spend several thousand dollars on the new EAS system because we did not want another earthquake to occur without the system being activated.

There was an earthquake in the Seattle area in 2001. While it was not as big as the Loma Prieta earthquake, it was still a big one. I had been through several earthquakes before. Usually they just come, shake things up for 5-10 seconds, then go away. This one shook for at least 45 seconds.



By this time the new EAS system was in place. It was not activated. The system that was designed because the old system was considered a failure because it was not activated after an earthquake was not activated after an earthquake. Why not? It was felt that since it was an earthquake, and everyone knew it was an earthquake, then why activate it to tell everyone there was an earthquake?

"Hi. I'm from the government and I am here to help."