Worker who sent Hawaii's false alarm believed there really was a missile attack

A preliminary investigation into that terrifying ballistic missile false alarm that sent Hawaii into an end-of-the-world tizzy a few weeks ago has found the hysteria was caused by a worker who sent it really believed a missile was on its way.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the FCC investigation found a comedy of errors led to the decidedly unfunny false alarm, including the poor interface which had previously been blamed for the errant message. But it wasn't just pressing the wrong button alone that caused the mess.

It began with a miscommunication between the night-shift supervisor, who prompted the test drill for the day shift, and the day-shift supervisor, who thought it was the night shift that would be tested.

When the drill began, an alert message was played for staff. But the worker who sent the alert failed to hear the portion of the message that said, "Exercise, exercise, exercise," He did, however, hear the phrase "this is not a drill," which shouldn't have been in the message in the first place.

So, yeah. Suddenly, the decision to send the alert is a bit more understandable, even if it was an error. Still, while officials became aware of the mistake within three minutes, according to the Post, it took them nearly half an hour to decide how they'd tell the public everything was actually fine.

The worker who sent the alert has refused to speak to investigators but did submit a written statement. On Tuesday afternoon, CNN reported that the worker was fired.

In addition, Vern Miyagi, the administrator for Hawaii's state Emergency Management Agency, resigned after taking responsibility for the incident.

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Addressing concerns over system efficiencies, redundancies, and the dangers posed by such mistaken alerts, FCC chair Ajit Pai said, “When disaster strikes, it’s essential that Americans in harm’s way get reliable information so that they can stay safe and protect their loved ones. People shouldn’t miss out on potentially lifesaving information just because the alert system’s current brush stroke is too broad.”

Ironically. Pai's previous rollback of net neutrality will make it harder for future victims of false alarms to work their stress off by searching for porn.

But, hey, hopefully we'll get things down so there aren't any more of these false alarms, despite the fact that we continue to live in a world in which our president treats the threat of nuclear armageddon like a rocket-measuring contest.

This article has been updated to include the firing of the person who sent the alert.