Hawaii man wants people to know he didn’t send missile alert
HONOLULU — When an erroneous alert was sent out last month telling people in Hawaii that there was an incoming ballistic missile, Jeffrey Wong was an island away from the state’s emergency management agency office where he works as an operations officer.
Wong helped gather hundreds of panicked guests at his hotel on the island of Kauai to seek shelter in a restaurant until he confirmed the alert was a mistake.
Then an Associated Press photograph circulated picturing Wong months earlier at the agency’s Honolulu operations centre on Oahu island — and people mistakenly thought Wong was the “button-pusher” who sent out the alert, wrongly accusing him in online comments of causing widespread panic and confusion.
Wong told The Associated Press last week he quickly learned how cruel the internet can be: “A lot of anger, a lot of ignorance came out as a result of that.”