Brother of local man recalls "false alarm" missile scare in Hawaii

ELKHART, Ind. -- The brother of an Elkhart man said Saturday morning he didn’t hear any sirens or anything after getting an emergency alert notification that said a “missile threat inbound to Hawaii.”

“All I saw was folks coming out looking around,” said Kevin Garbett, who lives in Oahu. “It was really nerve wracking cause think about it ‘oh my gosh,’ I don’t know what to do.”

Garbett said he didn’t know what to do after he was told the target had an eight mile radius.

“If it’s a direct hit on one of our mountains and that’s pretty much from the mountain to the ocean,” he said.

Garbett’s brother, Kirk, who lives in Elkhart, said it was a scary situation for his brother and for the rest of their family on the mainland.

“I really do think this was very traumatic, in retrospect, you know,” he said. “You’re secluded, if you’ve got something coming your way you only have 10 minutes maybe 20 minutes to react.”

Garbett said for 12 minutes, he didn’t know what was coming and he didn’t know what to do, but to tell his loved ones good-bye.

“’Hey, I love you,’” he said. “You know, I talked to my sister, I talked to my dad, see I’m going to cry, right now, I talked to my two kids. I guess it was hard.”

He said, after this incident, the state should rethink how they handle these situations.