By David Fleet
Editor
About 7:40 Saturday morning Savannah Katulski woke up in paradise. The 23-year-old, 2011 Goodrich High School graduate had just moved into a small studio apartment in the city of Kapaa located on the fourth largest Hawaiian Island of Kauai.
“It was just a little after 8 a.m. when the alarm on my cell phone went off,” said Katulski, a former Hadley resident. “I thought what was going on?”
Katulski was one of millions of Hawaii residents who received an errant alert on their cellphones: “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.”

Katulski was new to island life. She earned a bachelors of science degree from Michigan State University in 2015 and recently a masters of science degree from Kansas State University. Last fall she was hired by the University of Hawaii as a livestock extension agent for Kauai County on the island of Kauai.
According to news sources a more detailed message scrolled across television screens in Hawaii: If you are indoors, stay indoors. If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in a building. Remain indoors well away from windows. If you are driving, pull safely to the side of the road and seek shelter in a building or lay on the floor.
“I had just moved in so I did not have cable television but nothing had reached the news yet,” she said. “There were no sirens going off in my town. I thought, really, I couldn’t live in paradise for week without something bad happening to me?”
Katulski called her landlord, a co-worker and finally her mother back in Hadley. There were few answers or more information regarding the warning. Then about 30 minutes later an explanation was broadcast that the missile alert was an error. According to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, at 8:05 a.m. local time Jan. 13, an employee at the HEMA intended to initiate an internal test of the emergency missile warning system. The mission was to practice sending an emergency alert to the public without actually sending it to the public.
“There was no panic on the streets,” she said. “It was early on a Saturday morning and my town is pretty small. But maybe in the bigger cities with more people there was panic. But not here.”
The U.S. naval facility and airport Barking Sands is located about five miles northwest of Kekaha, in Kauai County.
“The Pacific missile facility has a tremendous military influence in the state,” she said. “And likely had safeguards in place to eliminate the threat if it was real.”
The island city of Kapaa has a population of about 10,000 on the remote eastern shore of Kauai.
“People kept asking what are we suppose to do if the missiles are coming?” she said. “There was no panic just confusion. Some were upset, others somewhat angry. It was business as usual after that. The sermon at Sunday church was it should be a wake up call to make it right with the Lord.”