Senate Commerce Hawaii Field Hearing to Focus on Alert Act, Lessons From January False Alert
A planned Thursday Senate Commerce Committee field hearing on the January false alarm about a possible ballistic missile headed for Hawaii (see 1801160054 and 1803160042) is aimed as much at shaping legislation to address issues with the emergency alert system (EAS) highlighted in the incident as it is at answering lingering questions about the event, lawmakers and others told us. The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. at the East-West Center’s Keoni Auditorium in Honolulu.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, is to lead the hearing, but he told us other members of the state's congressional delegation also are likely to attend. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, U.S. Pacific Command leader Adm. Harry Harris and Hawaii Emergency Management Agency Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Arthur Logan are among those set to testify. FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Lisa Fowlkes, Federal Emergency Management Agency Continuity Communications Division Director Antwane Johnson and Hawaii Association of Broadcasters President Chris Leonard will appear.
Schatz told us he wants to focus on “the best, smartest way to set up” federal law on missile alerts since it's “clear that needs to be primarily a federal responsibility.” Schatz's Authenticating Local Emergencies and Real Threats Act (HR-4965/S-2385), filed in February, would give the federal government the sole authority to issue missile threat alerts and pre-empt state and local governments' role in issuing such warnings (see 1802070052). Schatz said he's pushing for Senate Commerce to mark up S-2385 in the near future. The Senate Homeland Security Committee, which also has jurisdiction over the bill, attached its language to the Department of Homeland Security Authorization Act (HR-2825), Schatz said.
Former FCC officials and emergency communications experts view pre-empting states' authority to issue missile alerts as a reasonable step given the Hawaii incident. It's “entirely appropriate,” especially because the “fewer steps that you have between” the sensors that would trigger a missile alert and the authorities who issue the alert, “the better,” said Venable communications lawyer Jamie Barnett: Hawaii must “rely on other agencies” that can detect missile launches, including the military, and “those are the entities that should initiate the alerts.” Any missile alert “should in some fashion be connected to the military,” said State University of New York at Albany College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity visiting assistant professor David Turetsky, like Barnett an ex-Public Safety Bureau chief. In the January incident, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HI-EMA) initiated the false alert based on a simulated call with Pacific Command (see 1801300053).
Part of the solution involves “restoring the public's trust that the alerts they receive are accurate and are going to help them remain safe,” Barnett said. Any legislative fix should ensure a set process to cancel false alerts “expeditiously,” Turetsky said. It's “just wrong” that “officials knew almost immediately that this alert was wrong and began reassuring each other from [Gov. David Ige (D)] on down, yet there was no quick transmission of that knowledge in the same fashion as the widely distributed alert.” HI-EMA issued a correction via social media before using the EAS to issue a follow-up message. It's concerning that neither Pacific Command nor the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which controls the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, “stopped the message on their own or transmitted a correction on their own,” Turetsky said. “That's a broken system.”
Schatz told us he also wants the hearing to focus on “what exactly happened” and “what we can learn from it to improve not only our own systems but also provide lessons learned to other local emergency management agencies.” Schatz and other lawmakers should ask during the hearing whether state officials have “got all contingencies covered” for issuing alerts, including whether HI-EMA and others now “have the command and control” capabilities to effectively cancel and correct errant warnings, Barnett said. The “root causes" of these issues “really come down to resources.”
Lawmakers need to decide whether state officials “have people with the correct qualifications” and if the government is providing competitive compensation, Barnett said. “Do you have enough resources for exercises and training? Do you have enough people on staff or are they stretched too far? None of that is very exciting, but if you're really going to solve the problem, then you have to look at the resources behind the policy.” There “may be some factfinding left to do” but it's clear there needs to be a “different approach” to issuing some alerts, Turetsky said.