Jan. 23, 2018 – West Bend, WI – A West Bend woman is sharing her story about being on vacation in Hawaii on January 13 when the state’s Emergency Management Agency issued a missile alert.
Ellie Dowden and her husband Travis were traveling with family and making breakfast when all their phones went off sounding the alert.
“We didn’t know what to do and there was nothing we could do,” she said.
Dowden said the alert sounded like an Amber alert … but with a message about “ballistic missiles.”
“About five to 10 minutes later some things started to pop up on Twitter. No one was sure…. and it finally came on the news and no one on the news knew either.”
Dowden said about 30 minutes after the initial alert they found out it was fake. “It was a stressful 30 minutes but there was nothing we could do,” she said.
Dowden and her family were scheduled to fly back to Wisconsin the next day.
Follow-up reports blame the faux alert on employee error and The Washington Post said it was “poor design” of the computer program.
On a more positive note: Watch for an upcoming story about Ellie Dowden, the new owner of Cornerstone Dental in Barton. And if the name Travis Dowden sounds familiar, you can find him running Bibinger’s in Cedar Creek.
