Hawaii governor couldn't log on to Twitter to warn people about false missile alarm

The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency sent a ballistic missile alert to millions of people across the state January 13, sending people into a panic.

Seventeen excruciating minutes went by before Hawaii governor David Ige alerted the public to the false alarm.

All because he didn't know his Twitter password.

"I have to confess that I don’t know my Twitter account log-ons and the passwords, so certainly that’s one of the changes I’ve made," Ige told reporters following his State of the State address Thursday.

The Hawaii Emergency Management system mistakenly sent the missile alert at 8:07 a.m.

Ige learned the alert was a false alarm two minutes after it was sent.

But the governor’s office didn't send a cancellation message on social media until 8:24 a.m.

Ige's social media accounts are managed by his communications staff members, a common practice among political figures.

His spokeswoman Cindy McMillan said last week that Ige had to track her down before they could post anything to the public.

"The focus really was trying to get as many people informed about the fact that it was a false alert," Ige added.

The governor said he has taken steps to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. Mainly, by saving his Twitter username and password on his phone. 

"I've been putting that on my phone so that we can access the social media directly," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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