{
  "id": "2018-01-13-university-of-hawaii-manoa-false-missile-alert",
  "slug": "university-of-hawaii-manoa-false-missile-alert-2018-01-13",
  "institution": {
    "name": "University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa",
    "shortName": "UH Mānoa",
    "state": "HI",
    "type": "public-r1",
    "alertSystemName": "UH Alert",
    "enrollment": 18000
  },
  "incident": {
    "date": "2018-01-13",
    "type": "other",
    "cleryCategory": "emergency-notification",
    "resolution": "confirmed-hoax",
    "headline": "Statewide ballistic missile alert reached campus in error; corrected 38 minutes later",
    "headlinePublic": "Statewide ballistic missile alert reached campus in error; corrected 38 minutes later",
    "summary": "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.'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert) reached every cell phone in the state. At UH Mānoa, [students ran toward marked fallout shelters on campus](https://x.com/HawaiiNewsNow/status/952299706922790913), only to find them locked. The correction came 38 minutes later. The university later [issued formal guidelines](https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2018/01/23/guidelines-after-false-missile-alert/) to address the gap.",
    "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."
  },
  "alerts": [
    {
      "sequence": 1,
      "type": "initial",
      "timestamp": "2018-01-13T08:07:00-10:00",
      "channel": "wea-ipaws",
      "verbatimText": "",
      "isVerbatimConfirmed": false,
      "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert",
      "sourceDescription": "Re-verified via case sources on en.wikipedia.org",
      "annotations": []
    },
    {
      "sequence": 2,
      "type": "update",
      "timestamp": "2018-01-13T08:20:00-10:00",
      "channel": "twitter-x",
      "verbatimText": "NO missile threat to Hawaii.",
      "isVerbatimConfirmed": true,
      "sourceUrl": "https://x.com/Hawaii_EMA/status/952243912415985664",
      "sourceDescription": "@Hawaii_EMA on X (verbatim all-clear after false missile alert)",
      "annotations": [
        "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"
      ],
      "characterCount": 28,
      "archiveUrl": null,
      "confidence": "high",
      "lastUpdated": "2026-07-18"
    },
    {
      "sequence": 3,
      "type": "correction",
      "timestamp": "2018-01-13T08:45:00-10:00",
      "channel": "wea-ipaws",
      "verbatimText": "",
      "isVerbatimConfirmed": false,
      "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert",
      "sourceDescription": "Re-verified via case sources on en.wikipedia.org",
      "annotations": []
    },
    {
      "sequence": 4,
      "type": "follow-up",
      "timestampApprox": "January 23, 2018, HST",
      "channel": "email",
      "verbatimText": "",
      "isVerbatimConfirmed": false,
      "sourceUrl": "https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2018/01/23/guidelines-after-false-missile-alert/",
      "sourceDescription": "UH News: Guidelines after false missile alert (Jan 23, 2018)",
      "annotations": []
    }
  ],
  "context": "[The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa](https://www.hawaii.edu/) 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.'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert) The alert reached every cellular phone in the state, including thousands of students, faculty, and staff at UH Mānoa. As [Hawaii News Now reported](https://x.com/HawaiiNewsNow/status/952299706922790913), students were seen running for shelter on campus moments after the alert pushed; many ran toward marked fallout shelters but [found them locked](https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i4/False-missile-alert-creates-confusion.html) 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](https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/30/us/hawaii-false-missile-alert-timeline), a 38-minute window in which Hawaii residents believed a nuclear strike was imminent. The CDC's [MMWR study](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6807a2.htm) documented the public-health impact, including documented panic and at least one heart attack attributed to the alert. The [FCC's official report](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-350119A1.pdf) 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](https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2018/01/23/guidelines-after-false-missile-alert/), 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.",
  "keyFindings": [
    "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"
  ],
  "responseTimeMinutes": 0,
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "2018 Hawaii false missile alert (Wikipedia)",
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert",
      "type": "other"
    },
    {
      "title": "University of Hawaii offers guidelines after false missile alert (UH System News)",
      "url": "https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2018/01/23/guidelines-after-false-missile-alert/",
      "type": "official-archive"
    },
    {
      "title": "Report and Recommendations on the False Alert (FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau)",
      "url": "https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-350119A1.pdf",
      "type": "after-action-report"
    },
    {
      "title": "Public Health Emergency Risk Communication and Social Media Reactions to an Errant Warning of a Ballistic Missile Threat, Hawaii, January 2018 (CDC MMWR)",
      "url": "https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6807a2.htm",
      "type": "after-action-report"
    },
    {
      "title": "False missile alert creates confusion for chemists in Hawaii (C&EN)",
      "url": "https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i4/False-missile-alert-creates-confusion.html",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "Timeline of the Hawaii false missile alert shows how drill went wrong (CNN)",
      "url": "https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/30/us/hawaii-false-missile-alert-timeline",
      "type": "local-media"
    },
    {
      "title": "2018 Hawaiʻi Ballistic Missile Scare: one year later (Manoa Now / Ka Leo)",
      "url": "https://www.manoanow.org/2018-hawai-i-ballistic-missile-scare-one-year-later/article_8d4d8d06-1708-11e9-a90b-2fa723bdd0be.html",
      "type": "student-newspaper"
    },
    {
      "title": "@Hawaii_EMA on X (verbatim all-clear after false missile alert)",
      "url": "https://x.com/Hawaii_EMA/status/952243912415985664",
      "type": "official-archive"
    }
  ],
  "confidence": "high",
  "tags": [
    "false-alert",
    "wea-ipaws",
    "ballistic-missile",
    "hawaii",
    "uh-manoa",
    "fallout-shelter",
    "civil-defense",
    "system-failure",
    "human-error",
    "fcc-report"
  ],
  "dateAdded": "2026-05-03",
  "lastUpdated": "2026-07-20",
  "addedBy": "ingestion"
}