The Hawaii state employee who broadcast a false alarm about a ballistic missile attack on Jan. 13 believed a missile was really headed for the island state, according to a preliminary report from the Federal Communications Commission.

The worker told the FCC that he had misheard a recorded message as part of an unscheduled drill. The FCC’s investigation is still uder way, but the agency reported that a combination of human error and improper safeguards led to the confusion that resulted in the erroneous message being disseminated via text message and other means to millions of people in Hawaii. It took 38 minutes for officials to correct the mistake.

The incident underscored the speed at which information, true or false, travels when nearly everyone has a smartphone within reach and when alerts, trivial or vital, pop up constantly on the screen.

According to FCC officials, a supervisor mistakenly included the words “this is not a drill” in a recording. When an emergency official heard this message, he believed it was an actual emergency and sent the message.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said during the commission’s monthly meeting Tuesday that this mistake shows that Hawaii didn’t have the proper safeguards in place to prevent a mistake of this magnitude. 

“[The] presentation this morning makes clear that many things went wrong in Hawaii,” Pai said. “I don’t say this for the purpose of casting blame or disparaging Hawaiian officials.  We simply need to identify the problems in order to fix them — not just in Hawaii, but anywhere else where they may exist.”

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