When the Hawaiian Emergency Management Agency incorrectly alerted residents to an nonexistent ballistic missile hurtling toward the state last January, James Sean Shields prepared to die. First he called his children to say he loved them one last time. Then he had a heart attack.Shields — along with more than a million people living in the island state — had no clue the emergency alert was a mistake, and spent 40 minutes thinking a missile attack was imminent. Shields lived to learn the false alarm was a result of a massive mistake. Now, he and his girlfriend, Brenda Reichel, are suing the state of Hawaii and the former administrator of the emergency management agency for an unspecified amount of money, saying the false alert caused them both physical and mental anguish."They decided that there was not much they could do to protect themselves from this threat and decided that if they were going to die, they might as well die together on the beach,” says the lawsuit, which was filed in the state’s First Circuit Court on Tuesday
After Shields called his two children to say goodbye, the lawsuit alleges, he began to feel a severe pain in his chest and went to a nearby hospital, where he received emergency surgery for cardiac arrest. He did not previously have a known heart condition, according to the lawsuit.By the time the couple had reached the hospital, the state had already corrected the mistaken missile alert, which read: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” A state investigation found the employee that sent that alert had earnestly believed there was an attack, and had previously confused “real life events and drills.” The employee has since been fired. It took nearly 40 minutes to correct the alert because state authorities weren’t sure how to do so.Krishna Jayaram, special assistant to the state’s attorney general, told VICE News that his office is aware of the complaint.“We are reviewing it carefully and will respond in due course,” Jayaram said.Shields wasn’t the only person that paramedics treated for calls stemming from the missile alert, according to Hawaii News Now. During the confusion, an 89-year-old man fell, a 37-year-old woman got into a car accident, and a 38-year-old woman called 911 over anxiety relating to the alert.Cover image: A staffer watches for disaster alerts in the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency command center in Honolulu, United States, on Nov. 30, 2017. (Kyodo) ==Kyodo (Photo by Kyodo News via Getty Images)
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