The Hawaii false alarm worker was '100 percent' sure the crisis was real

A screen shot take by Hawaiian citizen Alison Teal shows the screen of her mobile phone with a false alert text message sent to all Hawaiian citizens on January 13, 2018.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 3 February 2018

The Hawaiian emergency agency worker who accidentally sent a false alarm warning of an incoming ballistic missile attack last month was "100 percent" sure the crisis was real, he told NBC News for a report published Friday evening.

"I'm really not to blame for this. It was a system failure and I did what I was trained to do," he said. "It was incredibly difficult for me, very emotional," to learn of the mistake, he continued. "I felt sick afterward. It was like a body blow."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.