UH Mānoa

Statewide ballistic missile alert reached campus in error; corrected 38 minutes later

AI-generated · every claim is source-linked

Saturday, January 13, 2018HIotheremergency notificationhigh confidence

Confirmed HoaxDetermined to be a hoax. The institutional response is documented because it reveals how the alert system performed under a perceived real threat.

At 8:07 AM HST on January 13, 2018, a Wireless Emergency Alert reading 'BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.' reached every cell phone in the state. At UH Mānoa, students ran toward marked fallout shelters on campus, only to find them locked. The correction came 38 minutes later. The university later issued formal guidelines to address the gap.

Alerts: 4
Response: 0 min
Killed: —
Injured: —

Institution

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Public R1 · HI

All UH Mānoa cases →

~18,000 studentsUH Alert

Official alert policy

Read when and how UH Mānoa says it will use UH Rave Alert: summarized, quoted, and analyzed.

Documented Timeline

Alert Sequence

4 messages in sequence · 1 verified verbatim

Confirmed wording is transcribed character-for-character from a primary source. Use Verify this quote under each message to open that source in a new tab and compare the text yourself.

Some messages in this sequence are documented (their existence, timing, and channel are sourced) but their exact wording is not preserved in the public record. Those entries appear as placeholders; only confirmed text is displayed.

INITIAL ALERTWEA/IPAWSJan 13, 2018, 8:07 AM HST

Wording not yet recovered

A message was sent at this point in the sequence; its exact wording has not yet been recovered from the official record, so no text is shown. This site never paraphrases or reconstructs alert wording. Markers like this one keep the emergency's true shape and become word-for-word messages as recovery reaches the source.

Re-verified via case sources on en.wikipedia.org

UPDATETwitter/XJan 13, 2018, 8:20 AM HST+13 min

Verified verbatim28 chars

NO missile threat to Hawaii.

Verify this quote

@Hawaii_EMA on X (verbatim all-clear after false missile alert)x.com find archived copies

Verified complete alert text on https://x.com/Hawaii_EMA/status/952243912415985664; archiveUrl null (X status). characterCount=28.

HI-EMA's Twitter account posted this 13 minutes after the false WEA, but the official EAS/WEA correction would not come for another 25 minutes

Reaching only social-media-active users, this post left the vast majority of Hawaii residents (and UH Mānoa students seeking shelter) without authoritative correction

Demonstrates the social-media-first information asymmetry that characterized the gap: Twitter users knew it was false 25 minutes before WEA recipients did

State-issued message: posted by HI-EMA's official account, not by the University of Hawaiʻi, so isVerbatimConfirmed is set to false; it is recorded here as a state correction that reached campus, not a UH campus alert

CORRECTIONWEA/IPAWSJan 13, 2018, 8:45 AM HST+38 min

Wording not yet recovered

Re-verified via case sources on en.wikipedia.org

FOLLOW-UPEmailJanuary 23, 2018, HST

Wording not yet recovered

UH News: Guidelines after false missile alert (Jan 23, 2018)

Context

Background

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is the flagship campus of the UH System, serving approximately 18,000 students in Honolulu. At 8:07 AM HST on January 13, 2018, the Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency erroneously pushed a Wireless Emergency Alert reading 'BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.' The alert reached every cellular phone in the state, including thousands of students, faculty, and staff at UH Mānoa. As Hawaii News Now reported, students were seen running for shelter on campus moments after the alert pushed; many ran toward marked fallout shelters but found them locked and ended up sheltering in classrooms instead. HI-EMA's Twitter account posted a correction at 8:20 AM HST, but the official WEA retraction did not push until 8:45 AM HST, a 38-minute window in which Hawaii residents believed a nuclear strike was imminent. The CDC's MMWR study documented the public-health impact, including documented panic and at least one heart attack attributed to the alert. The FCC's official report found the alert was triggered by a single employee selecting the wrong drop-down option, with no procedural safeguard to prevent it. UH issued formal post-incident guidelines on January 23, its first explicit ballistic-missile shelter guidance in the IPAWS era. The case is significant because it is one of the only documented WEA-IPAWS misfires of national security consequence and revealed that UH Mānoa's Cold War-era fallout shelters were no longer operational.

Analysis

Key Findings

The 8:07 AM HST WEA reading 'BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.' is one of the most consequential false alerts in IPAWS history

UH Mānoa students ran to marked fallout shelters on campus and found them locked, revealing that the campus's Cold War-era civil defense infrastructure was no longer operational

The 38-minute gap between false alert and official WEA retraction (8:07 to 8:45 AM HST) was the central failure analyzed by the FCC

UH issued post-incident ballistic-missile shelter guidelines on January 23, 2018, its first explicit guidance in the WEA-IPAWS era

A single employee selecting the wrong drop-down option triggered statewide panic; the FCC found there was no procedure to prevent a single person from sending a real missile alert

Outcome

False alarm caused by a single Hawaii Emergency Management Agency employee selecting the wrong drop-down option. No injuries on campus, but documented panic, students running to locked fallout shelters, and at least one heart attack statewide attributed to the alert. UH issued formal post-incident guidelines on January 23, 2018.

Provenance

Sources

Every claim on this page is meant to be checkable. Open the links below (and the Verify this quote control under each confirmed alert) to read the original university, news, or archive page yourself. Hostnames are shown so you can see where you are going; archived copies survive when live pages move or disappear. See also our methodology.

Source
2018 Hawaii false missile alert (Wikipedia)
en.wikipedia.org
archived copy
Official
University of Hawaii offers guidelines after false missile alert (UH System News)
hawaii.edu
archived copy
Report
Report and Recommendations on the False Alert (FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau)
docs.fcc.gov
archived copy
Report
Public Health Emergency Risk Communication and Social Media Reactions to an Errant Warning of a Ballistic Missile Threat, Hawaii, January 2018 (CDC MMWR)
cdc.gov
archived copy
News
False missile alert creates confusion for chemists in Hawaii (C&EN)
cen.acs.org
archived copy
News
Timeline of the Hawaii false missile alert shows how drill went wrong (CNN)
cnn.com
archived copy
Student Paper
2018 Hawaiʻi Ballistic Missile Scare: one year later (Manoa Now / Ka Leo)
manoanow.org
archived copy
Official
@Hawaii_EMA on X (verbatim all-clear after false missile alert)
x.com
archived copy

Cite this case

Campus Alert Archive. "University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa: Statewide ballistic missile alert reached campus in error; corrected 38 minutes later." Incident of January 13, 2018. Added May 2026; last updated July 2026. https://campusalertarchive.com/case/university-of-hawaii-manoa-false-missile-alert-2018-01-13/

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Alert text quoted on this page remains the work of the issuing institution; the archive is a secondary source.

Alert Sequence

Background

Key Findings

Sources

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