Dream trip turns into confusion

What was supposed to be a pleasant vacation in Hawaii with her family turned out to be 37 minutes of confusion and fright on the morning of Jan. 13.
 “It was my bucket list trip,” said Coleen Pedersen of Ghent, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in early 2017.
“I’ve never been to Hawaii before and this is what I wanted to do.”
 At 8:08 a.m., as Pedersen, her longtime companion Lawrence Rogge, and their children Cailin (Rogge) Morris and Austin Rogge were all vacationing in Hawaii, a warning was issued simultaneously on their Smartphone in upper case letters that read:
 “EMERGENCY ALERT. BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL”.
 The message was also sent out to television and radio stations, as well as digital highway signs.
 The entire state of Hawaii was put on alert and there was panic in some areas, bewilderment in others.
 “I don’t think we were scared as much as we were all just confused,” said Pedersen.
“We had heard a rumor before we left for Hawaii that North Korea was going to send a missile to Hawaii on Jan. 20.”
“We would be coming back from our trip then so we felt safe.”
 Cailin called her husband Cole, who is in the Navy, to see if he knew anything about the missile threat.
But Cole informed his wife that he knew nothing about it.
 “The day before, we were told at our condo we were staying at that there were phone scams going around, so we wondered if that’s what this was,” Pedersen said.
“We just didn’t know what to think. I felt pretty calm. I didn’t freak out or anything.”
 All four of the members of Pederson’s party were in a different room of their condo when each of their phones was text-messaged.
“We didn’t really know if it was real or not, even though it said it wasn’t a drill on the message,” Pedersen explained. “I went down to the office to see what was going on and they didn’t know for sure either.”
Pedersen walked out to the underground garage to check things out, but didn’t witness a lot of the pandemonium and hysteria that was captured by television reporters.
“There were people standing by their cars wondering what was going on,” she said. “I didn’t see a lot of people running around, though.”
The missile threat warning was sent out on Smartphones, but those owning flip phones did not receive the text.
 “One lady had a flip phone and was wondering what was going on,” Pedersen told. “So she grabbed my phone to read it.”
 “I didn’t want to be in an underground garage if there was a missile coming because (the garage) would collapse on top of me. So I went back to our room.”
 Even though it likely felt a lot longer to most people, a revised message was sent out via phones 37 minutes after the initial warning message; this time indicating that the first message was sent in error.
At 8:45 a.m., this “all clear” message was sent in lower case letters:
“There is no missile threat or danger to the State of Hawaii. Repeat. False Alarm”.
 “A lot of people were upset,” said Pedersen. “They wanted some answers on how that first message could be sent out in error like that.”
Hawaii Governor David Ige attributed the inadvertent message to human error.
“It was a mistake made during a standard procedure at the change of a shift,” said Gov. Ige. “An employee pushed the wrong button.”
Other than those 37 minutes, Pedersen and her party enjoyed their time in Hawaii from Jan. 10-Jan. 20.
 “(The erroneous missile warning) didn’t spoil our trip,” said Pedersen. “We had a good time.”
“One of the things we did was take a helicopter ride over an active volcano on the Big Island. You could see the hot lava inside the volcano. The Big Island grew 500 acres bigger after the last volcano eruption in 1992 because of all the lava that flowed.”
Pedersen was surprised how different the landscape of Hawaii is different than what she expected.
“There is hardly any green grass anywhere,” she said. “There are roads and streets, but the ground is mostly all black like a plowed field. And that’s because of volcanoes they have had erupt.”
Pedersen and her group also experienced the thrill of zip-lining during their trip.
“We went on the longest one that is a quarter-mile and when you are way up there, you can see three different islands; Maui, Manana and Molokini,” she said.
Pedersen’s group also enjoyed a native luau that featured a clam bake and hog roast, complete with fire dancers entertaining those in attendance.
“We tried some coconut milk and it tasted sweet,” she said. “And we toured a coffee plantation. It was interesting to learn that coffee is a fruit and the seed actually comes from a berry that grows on trees.”
Pedersen, who was initially diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, is now home in rural Ghent and works for U.S. Bank in Marshall.