Humboldt resident Blaine Weyland was walking along a Hawaii beach Saturday morning when a woman came up to him and showed him a message on her phone, warning of an imminent missile attack.

“I’m not going to lie, I kind of shrugged it off and said, ‘it’s got to be fake. She’s like, ‘I hope so,’” Weyland told Bolt FM.

The alert was broadcast by Hawaiian media Saturday and sent to hundreds of thousands of cell phones, directing panicked residents to take immediate shelter.

It then took nearly 40 minutes to inform residents the alert was sent in error.

By the time Weyland got back to his condo five or 10 minutes later, the warning was already confirmed to be false.

“I guess in the condo here there were a lot more people scurrying around but since I was down by the ocean with no wifi, I didn’t get the notice right away and no one really knew what was going on. There were no sirens going off, in my area at least, so it was kind of calm here. 

“But I guess in other parts of the island it was a little bit more hectic.”

Officials say the bogus alert was caused by someone at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency pushing the wrong button.

With Canadian Press files