The top two civilian officials of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency have resigned in a personnel shakeup stemming from the false ballistic missile alert earlier this month that caused mass hysteria across the state.
Hawaii officials announced that Emergency Management Agency administrator Vern Miyagi and executive officer Toby Clairmont have resigned.
The individual who admitted to mistakenly issuing the alert has been fired.
It has emerged that he mistook an alert drill for an actual attack and was confused by conflicting messages used in the simulation.
An investigation found the system for activating a missile alert and conducting emergency drills was deeply flawed, lacking sufficient clarity, fail-safe controls or even a pre-programmed way of issuing a false alarm notice to the public.
Those shortcomings came into play the day a supervisor decided to initiate a drill during a weekend shift change, leading a warning system officer to mistakenly transmit a live missile alert.
The message, issued amid heightened tension over North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, stated: "EMERGENCY ALERT BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
It went uncorrected for 38 minutes and triggered hysteria and confusion across Hawaii.
Hawaii Governor David Ige, whose response to the incident was called into question, said changes had been implemented so there would be no repeat of the incident.
