An alert woke me up at 8:08 am this morning
So I live on Maui and woke up this morning to the alert that said “EMERGENCY ALERT. BALLISTIC MISSILE INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL”. My eyes go huge and I get out of bed and put on the nearest clothes to me and try to go out to see if this is real or not. I’m a little on edge but unsure of what’s going on still. First thing my roommate says to me when I walk out to the living room was “you got the emergency alert too right?” and that’s when I started to take things a bit more seriously. We both rush over to the dive shop we both work out that we coincidentally live behind to see if they have any idea what’s happening. We run into our other roommate and another coworker both frantically closing up shop saying “guys we’re getting out of here.” The reality had finally set in that this possibly might be the last few moments of our lives. Everyone we had contacted on island got the same notification and everyone was getting ready for some sort of North Korea nuclear attack. The only thing we could even try to do was run back to the house and try to call our loved ones and say our last goodbyes. Not one single phone was able to reach the mainland through calling and I was heartbroken I’d never get to tell my parents I loved them again. I just sent them each texts of what was going on and that I loved them so much. Enough time had passed I knew the impact would have to hit soon enough and I was just coming to the reality that this was it for us. When I got inside I found our fourth roommate (who was not present)’s girlfriend in our house with tears full in her eyes talking about how this is it. She mentioned after she was horrified at the fact she’d never be able to marry him if it all happened. Anyways another friend of ours got the news too and drove to our house because she didn’t want to die alone either. We had been concerned about them being on the road but thanked god they at least made it there safe. We all just sat there embracing death together and trying to just make the most of the last moments. and then we get the “false alarm” notification. It had only been 38 minutes but so much had happened and there was so much terror between us all. We couldn’t have been happier we actually got to survive and continue living life. It was crazy to actually think that we’d be thankful just for simple living. It made me realize how real the possibility for danger actually would be in an attack like this and that truly scares me. Such a large-scale terror should never have happened. All I can really do is be thankful it was just a false alarm and hope our country does better to prepare for such things.
