1 . “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.”
It might sound like something straight out of a horror movie, but for 38 minutes terrified Hawaiian residents thought the world was going to end.
On Saturday, locals and tourists on the small island woke up to a message that many have feared amid North Korea’s development of a nuclear weapon.
Panicked residents gathered family members, ran out onto the streets and anxiously sought shelter as they awaited the attack. Cars were abandoned on highways and people who were outside at the time hid in the basements of neighbours as others prepared to flee.
Stacey Bow, 56, of Honolulu was awakened to the emergency alert(警报) on her smart phone and woke up her 16- year- old daughter, who became hysterical, crying. Cherese Carlson, said the moments following the alert were filled with fear. “I had no friends here to turn to for help,”she said. “There was nothing I could do but sit in my car worried that it was the end of my life.”
Others thought that it was a hoax or a false alarm, since the sirens(报警汽笛) did not ring out. “I thought to myself, it must be someone’s last day at work or someone got extremely upset at a superior and basically did this as a joke,” said Brian Naeole, who was visiting Honolulu from Molokai, adding that he didn’t hear sirens and neither TV nor radio stations issued alerts.
It turned out that the incident was caused by a worker who pressed the wrong button. A revised alert informing people of the “false alarm” did not reach mobile phones until about 40 minutes after the first warning was sent. Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency administrator Vern Miyagi said, “there was no automated way to send a false alarm cancellation. We had to initiate a manual process. And that was why it took a while to inform everyone”. He apologised for the false alarm.
1. When did the people probably receive the alert message?| A．At 8:07 a.m. |
| B．At 11:05 a.m. |
| C．At 6:13 p.m. |
| D．At 9:05 p.m. |
| A．She was a local living in Honolulu. |
| B．She celled up her friends for assistance. |
| C．She had to hide in a strong basement |
| D．She was probably a tourist visiting Hawaii. |
| A．Desperate. |
| B．Calm. |
| C．Terrified. |
| D．Funny. |
| A．expressed in words |
| B．controlled by computers |
| C．operated by hand |
| D．performed by robots |
