The Atlantic explores how Hawaii sent out the wrong information that scared so many Saturday morning.
With such sophisticated and time-tested systems behind the scenes, how could that agency make a mistake like this one? The simple answer is human error, which is how the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Richard Rapoza characterized the incident in an interview with my colleague Adrienne LaFrance. That explanation serves up cold comfort to the Hawaii residents who thought they faced possible obliteration this morning. “My 10-year-old said, ‘I thought we were going to die,’”tweeted Chris Gaither, who is on vacation in Hawaii.
But beyond a bad look, human error is also not a terribly informative explanation for the spike in anxiety the message created. That’s largely because emergency notifications have become so efficient. Too efficient, maybe.
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