There has been much discussion this week about the incident in Hawaii on the weekend where a button was pushed that sent out a false alert saying a ballistic missile was inbound.  The alert caused wide spread panic and has lead to much discussion of major changes in how Hawaii handles all alerts going forward.

Moose Jaw's Katie Keeler  was in Hawaii with her family when it happened.  In her words, this is how it felt.

Troy and I were on our lanai having our morning coffee. My dad was down at the beach. My mom and niece were in their condo.

The phones started squealing and the TV blared the sirens & red message alerts. I have been to Maui 18 times and every January there is an alert, usually testing the island tsunami system.. But it always says, "This is just a test". I was expecting the same routine.

First thing I did was Google it-- absolutely nothing on there in regards to a missile. I messaged a military family that I recently met when I sold a house to them and the wife had said she would contact her husband immediately.

A lady from our building told us to get runners on in case of debris/glass/rubble. My mom messaged me saying that the lifeguards had cleared the beach with their mega phones and that my dad had made it back to the condo. My niece was watching Curious George when the message came on. She started shaking and bawling uncontrollably.

It was my mom's birthday that day and she thought that she may die the same day she was born. I was told to get indoors immediately and away from any windows. Mom said people were hurrying to the enclosed concrete stairwell. Some of the hotels were being evacuated with police help to a near by parking garage. Some people were putting their kids down into the storm drains. It was pandemonium.

I personally stayed in the room feeling like.. you can't really escape something like that.. the blast maybe, but the radiation slim chance. I read up quickly on how to prepare, and realized how unprepared the people of Hawaii were for something of this magnitude.

We had arrived the night before & had no groceries in our condo. No water or food for the weeks to come even if we were to outlast the fallout. I had assumed that the Oahu base would be targeted, so thought maybe by the grace of God, it wouldn't extend this far.

I was oddly calm. No better place to die I admitted to myself. I messaged my military friends asking them to take care of my dog if anything happened. Told them which kennel he was at. They haven't met my dog but I figured I wouldn't have time to message another friend before the chaos struck.

She messaged me back saying that it was a false alarm several minutes before any clarification from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.

It took 38 minutes for them to send the second message.

To have a single button allow complete terror of thousands, it didn't make sense to me that they didn't have a button to cancel the initial alert in case of an accident. I was shopping today Tuesday) and saw that places here have already started to capitalize on the mistake with t-shirts saying, "Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii, seek immediate shelter, This is not a drill. JUST KIDDING".