Hawaii Missile Alert Worker Fired, Will Sue State for Defamation (khon2.com)

This week Hawaii finally fired the employee who issued a false missile alert warning to the entire state, while the head of the state's emergency management agency resigned, another official quit, and a fourth was suspended over the incident. But new details also emerged about the incident:

• After alerting workers on the wrong shift, the night supervisor "had started the drill by calling the day shift warning officers, who had not been told there was to be an exercise, and pretending to be U.S. Pacific Command," reports the Guardian, citing the FCC's investigation. The investigation confirmed that his script for the drill included the phrase "this is not a drill" (though it also began and ended with the words "exercise, exercise, exercise.")

• The New York Daily News reports that the warning officer missed those words "because someone in the office picked up the receiver instead of hitting the speaker." And he insists that "I'm really not to blame in this. It was a system failure. And I did what I was trained to do. I can't say that I would do anything differently based on what I saw and heard." His lawyer adds that "The place was a circus and they got their scapegoat... All that was missing were clowns and balloons."

• The fired worker now plans to sue the state of Hawaii for defamation, and possibly also for libel and slander, according to his lawyer, "because they lied about what happened." He also says that his client has already received numerous death threats.

• Washington Post audience editor says the incident happened "because Hawaii rewards incompetence," noting the employee behind the missile alert "had a history of performance problems and had been 'a source of concern,'" adding that the FCC reported that previously the employee "has confused real life events and drills on at least two separate occasions."

Comments

System problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like this was a system failure with plenty of culpability at several levels, though it is, in the end, the essential responsibility of the agency head that his agency can do its job. And it appears there were previous symptoms of the systemic problems. It is well known that warning test messages should NOT be worded like a real warning message precisely because it causes confusion. It should be like "in place of this message you would have received a description of the threat..." etc. The test is to test the *delivery* of the message, in which case the message content does not matter other than it should do everything possible to not create the impression of an actual emergency. Tornado sirens, for example, are only tested on clear days.

Re:Characterization of Service

[SlaveToTheGrind]

I don't think the State of Hawaii said anything about the employee.

Drilling down from TFA, it appears the FCC and DoD were the ones that did.

In fact, this article says, "[t]he state has not identified the worker."