Hawaiian worker who hit false missile alert is reassigned

HONOLULU  - Hawaii officials say an employee has been reassigned after mistakenly hitting the live alert button of the state's missile warning system, creating a wave of panic.

Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesman Richard Rapoza said in an email Monday that the worker has been temporarily moved to a job without access to the system amid an internal investigation.



He says no other personnel changes have been made.

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The agency has said that it changed protocols to require that two people send an alert and made it easier to cancel a false alarm — a process that took nearly 40 minutes Saturday.

The blunder caused more than a million people in Hawaii to fear that they were about to be struck by a nuclear missile.