Hawaii is a popular destination for Saskatchewan residents during the winter months, and so it should be no surprise that there were people from the southeast in the tourist destination during a missile scare on Jan. 13.
Among those people was Lampman’s Maureen Ulrich, who has been holidaying in the state with members of her family since Dec. 24, and will return to Saskatchewan on Jan. 27.
She said she awake at 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 13, and working on a writing project on her computer. Just after 8 a.m., her husband Randy’s phone went off, and it sounded like a siren.
“I went and I picked it up, and there was … this message … all in caps,” said Ulrich.
That message said a ballistic missile threat was inbound to Hawaii. People were ordered to seek immediate shelter.And it was punctuated with the statement that this was not a drill.
It turned out the message was sent accidentally.
She rushed down the stairs to her husband to warn him of the reports that missiles had been launched towards Hawaii. They started to wonder if it was real.
“There were no other sirens, by the way,” said Ulrich. “It was just dead quiet.”
The Ulriches place in Hawaii overlooks the hub of their resort complex, and there was no activity, which was rare for a morning.
“I saw two guys running from the swimming pool, where obviously they had gone for a swim, and they were running back to their units,” said Ulrich. “It was so eerie. We turned on the television, and couldn’t see anything on TV (on the missile scare).
“We just got dressed. I said ‘If this is the way the world is ending, I’m not going to die in my robe,” she said with a laugh.
They discussed whether it was real, and Ulrich felt it had to be a hack or a false alarm, since there wasn’t any coverage of a potential attack in the media.
If it was legitimate, they thought Honolulu would be the main target, rather than Maui. But if something did happen in Honolulu, then they knew it would be in Maui for an extended period of time.
A few minutes after the warning went off, the Ulriches went to her husband’s uncle’s unit. He has wintered in Hawaii for over 20 years, and is well connected. He was calm throughout the proceedings.
“He has lots of friends who are Canadians, and they’re all texting one another,” said Ulrich. “One of them was on Twitter, and he said it’s been reported on Twitter that it was a false alarm.”
At that point, she started to relax and watched the fallout from the panic on television.
“For about 15 minutes, you think this could have been it,” said Ulrich.
About 10 minutes after the warning was issued, the tweet was issued that said it was an error. It took 38 minutes before another message was sent to people’s phones, saying it wasn’t real.
Maui is a very laid back city, and it’s hard to get people excited about anything, but there was a lot of concern within the city. Within a couple of hours, life was back to normal in Maui, as people were back on the beach and in the swimming pools.
