On January 30, the Governor of Hawaii, David Ige, gave a press conference about the result of an official investigation into the January 13 ballistic missile alert that was an alleged false alarm. In the press conference Ige and other state officials gave a detailed account of the scenario that led to the false alarm.
While the official investigation concluded the emergency alert was a false alarm due to human error and a poorly designed reporting process, eyewitnesses continue to emerge saying they saw a meteorite, or something like it, exploding high in the sky over the Hawaii islands only minutes before the alert. Furthermore, eyewitnesses claim to have seen a television story about the exploding meteorite or object, before the news story was pulled.
In a video published on January 14, Marfoogle Watutu [a pseudonym] claims he was told by his sister, a Maui resident, about a tourist boat which carried multiple eyewitnesses to the exploding meteorite:
My
sister has lived in Maui for eight years and what she is finding out is
that a group of boaters that actually run a tour company say now that they saw something get blown out of the sky.
So, they said it looked like a meteor and then all of a sudden there was a big boom and it lit up the entire sky. It was 8 o’clock in the morning. . .
Maybe this was not a drill after all.
Maybe our Boys in Blue and Boys in Green shot it down. And I would
think that the U.S. would not want to cause more panic if they did try
to launch something at Hawaii. Then, of course, they would say it was a
mistake. They took responsibility very quickly that it was a mistake. .
. This could be bullshit but I just had to relay that. . . [Transcription Source]
Marfoogle has to date not released the names of any of the eyewitnesses or the tour boat company involved, making it difficult to confirm his story. He claims that Joe Rogan, a former comedian who now hosts The Joe Rogan Experience, has contacted him and is contemplating doing a report on the incident, and that some of the names have been released to him.
