North Coast man caught up in Hawaii missile drama
THE missile alert in Hawaii wasn't the quite the bang North Coast man Phil Sheedy was expecting for his 50th birthday celebrations.
Inspector Sheedy, a Fire & Rescue Northern Rivers duty commander, was about 100ft underwater diving off the coast of Waikiki on Saturday local time for his birthday when he received the text alert about the imminent missile strike.
The text message sent at 8.07am read: "Extreme alert. Ballistic missile inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter this is not a drill”.
At that time, Insp Sheedy said he would have just risen to the surface when the missile would have hit and imagined what it would have been like to watch an ominous mushroom cloud rise from the island.
He understood a ballistic missile from North Korea could reach the US territory within 18 minutes.
The text message sparked mass panic across the island, Insp Sheedy said.
He had heard stories of people running red lights in a bid to find shelter, but some decided to run into bars "to get their last beers before they died”.
Others he said opted to "sit back and relax, watch the ocean and have a beer”.
On the dive boat, Insp Sheedy said the marine radio was abuzz with chatter questioning the text message.
"Essentially for 38 minutes, no one knew if it was real or not,” Insp Sheedy said.
It wasn't until 8.45am that another text message was sent out confirming the initial alert was a 'false alarm”.
In his emergency service experience, Insp Sheedy said he had suspicions about the legitimacy of the alert when there was no sign of action from other emergency services agencies.
He said he was "quite gobsmacked” as to how such a significant error had occurred.
While he described it as a "genuine error”, Insp Sheedy expected that there would be a major overhaul of the existing protocol.
"From an emergency services point of view, you'd think heads would roll, someone would lose their job over this,” he said.
"I think someone's had a fat finger and pushed the wrong button.”
Meanwhile, Insp Sheedy hopes to kick back and relax for the final six days of his holiday in Hawaii.
