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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."
If it said not a drill, it's not his fault. Fire the person who added "not a drill" to a drill.
... to let the courts, and not public opinion, sort this one out.
firing just leads to people covering up errors and blame passing. or people slowing work down to the point where you need 2-3 people to sign off to get stuff done.
To avoid issues, government HR briefs supervisors that when commenting on the dismissal of an employee, or providing a reference or confirmation of employment that is is important NOT to provide a characterization of service. In other words you say:
The fact they provided, to the press, a characterization of his service, include details about his past issues, the State of Hawaii should probably settle and then brief their Emergency Management folks to keep their &^%*ing mouths shut next time.
I can't believe management felt the need to fire someone over this. I mean, it was a bit of an embarrassing mistake, but it's not like any real damage was done, other than letting everyone know that some procedures needed to be reworked.
I'd say that this whole firing and subsequent lawsuit is more embarrassing than the original mistake.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
Some jobs like public safety shouldn't get a second chance. They had ONE job, and failed on multiple levels - the whole department should be replaced and internal policies evaluated.
Okay, apart from making everybody think for half an hour that they were about to die.
but it's not like any real damage was done
The entire island was running around in terror with nowhere to go for over half an hour before these schlocks finally managed to say "oops, just kidding." Would you require actual blood to be spilled or someone to actually die over the mass panic before you consider it to be "real damage"?
This was a government announcement that scared millions of people, cost time and money for millions as they had to deal with the false alert, and will contribute to mistrust of _real_ announcements of danger. This is also not the employee's first major mistake. If that is not grounds for firing someone, what would be?
No one apparently died, as they rushed to handle the emergency. But that is happenstance: emergency vehicles getting into place, or phones tied up at emergency services as they deal with the social fallout, are measurable risks for that kind of mistake.
...than the missile he erroneously sounded the alarm for.
I'd be more apt to fire the person who put "This is not a drill" in the message when it was clearly a drill.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Okay, apart from making everybody think for half an hour that they were about to die.
I'm not sure experiencing that is a bad thing. I've had two near-death experiences in my 54 years - once in a car accident and once from accidentally breathing ammonia + bleach fumes from a bucket I thought was empty. In addition, my wife died of a brain tumor in 2006. Being close to death and dying gives you some perspective on life, living and other people - something many people could use more of.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It can be very difficult to fire a union worker without a strong track record of failure. It can also be unfair to fire someone for a single bad mistake if they have years of good productivity, or are under enormous work stress. This is why managers write "recovery plans", to give an employee a chance to improve.
Also, "The Peter Pinciple" still applies today, especially in unionized work. The book of that name described how people progress and get promoted until they are no longer competent enough to get promoted anymore. Many people have learned to refuse to be demoted back to where they _were_ competent and productive, because it poisons your resume and limits your income.and seniority in workplaces where that matters. I've had to be _very_ careful in my own career to avoid getting promoted to work I'd not do well: it startles many managers when an employee refuses a promotion.
You do NOT. PUT. THE. WORDS. this is not a drill IN. A. FUCKING. DRILL.
To the person or persons responsible for firing the guy, if, that is, I had the power to fire them, I would ask the following question: Yes means no, and no means yes. Would you like me to fire you?
Then I would totally fire them no matter what they said.
I myself have had to deal with incompetent morons in leadership positions who literally did not know the literal meanings of words they were using, including, yes, literally.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
*Did* he screw up? Or did he do precisely what he was supposed to do in the presence of the received messages? "This is not a drill" is not something anyone sensible would add to a drill unless they intended to cause people to believe it was not a drill.
And *why* wasn't there any way to cancel, override, etc. the message? That's the real totally horrible oversight. Everything else is relatively minor...though I'd sure rake the guy who wrote that script over the coals.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Overall this case stinks of bad policy and procedures.
If there's a drill involving "not a drill" statement then there must also be a safeguard in place to block stuff from coming out. But I agree - anyone stating "not a drill" must also deal with the fact that it can come out.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Dilbert? Is that you?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Some jobs like public safety shouldn't get a second chance. They had ONE job, and failed on multiple levels - the whole department should be replaced and internal policies evaluated.
The test didn't fail. It did what it was supposed to do: reveal problems. Skipping possible lies,
1. Picking up the phone then realizing it was an alert and putting it on speakerphone loses the initial 3 "drill drill drill" or whatever it was.
2. If they sent out an ostensibly real alert then realized it was fake, they shouldn't have to dig through layers of officials for half an hour to reach someone authorized to cancel a "real" alert.
3. Why isn't the drill issuer sitting there watching ready to put a kibosh on it if it went wrong?
The rest, such as during shift change, is fine as that could actually happen. "Drill not a dril!" is not so useful unless if you're testing if you need a W.O.P.R. to launch nuclear missiles.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Firing absolutely has to be on the decision tree somewhere, but not near the root of the tree for all the reasons you say. Firing is not a quick fix, except insofar as shielding other people responsible for a problem.
Given that the people who worked with the button-pusher had doubts about his ability to perform, and that this isn't the first time that employee has failed to distinguish between real and drill emergencies, there's obviously a lot more wrong with the way the agency handles performance issues, as well as with the way this particular drill was conducted. If that's not corrected, it could leave employees gun-shy in a real crisis.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What also gets me about this whole story is that they apparently didn't have a procedure in place for issuing a "oops, our bad, ignore the last message" message on the system. I mean the ability for an emergency alert to cause a panic is blindingly obvious, and no matter the safety systems in place there is always a chance that a wrong message might be sent out. It shouldn't happen but it can, so there should have been an obvious way to retract erroneous message.
Escape it how? It's an island. Surrounded by water. For miles.
Ideally, get underground.
I take it you're already running drills.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Next time, likely less than 1% will take it seriously.
I take it then you agree real damage was done.