Governor pins false-alarm delay on Twitter password

Gov. David Ige told reporters Monday that part of the delay in notifying the public that the Jan. 13 ballistic missile alert was a false alarm was that he did not know his Twitter account password.

The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency issued the false alarm at 8:07 a.m., and Ige was told the missile alert was a false alarm two minutes after the alert was sent to cellphones across the state. However, Ige’s office did not get out a cancellation message until 17 minutes after the alert.

Ige was asked about that delay when he met with reporters after his State of the State address, and he said, “I was in the process of making calls to the leadership team both in Hawaii Emergency Management as well as others.”

Ige added, “I have to confess that I don’t know my Twitter account logons and the passwords, so certainly that’s one of the changes that I’ve made. I’ve been putting that on my phone so that we can access the social media directly.”

It is common for staff members of political figures to maintain their social media accounts and to post or tweet on their behalf.

“The focus really was on trying to get as many people informed about the fact that it was a false alert,” Ige said. Ige stressed that steps have been taken to assure there will be no recurrence.