Hawaii Isn't Ready For A Real Missile Threat, Says State Report

A state report says Hawaii isn't prepared for a ballistic missile threat, evidence that a plan wasn't fully developed when residents got a faulty alert last month.

Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency sent out an alert in January that a ballistic missile was heading toward the state. You know by now that wasn't the case, and all that alert did was spark widespread panic.

Now, officials say the state's plan for what to do in the event of an actual threat isn't fleshed out. It says Hawaii needs to give residents better direction about what to do if there's an actual emergency. And it says the state's agencies don't communicate with each other like they should if there were a real threat.

The report also says Hawaii needs a system to quickly correct false alerts; it took 38 minutes for the faulty alert to be corrected.

Plus, the report says the state's emergency management agency needs more money. Until Hawaii makes some changes to its response plan, the report says the state should stop its ballistic missile preparedness campaign except to test sirens.