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It is a phone call no parent would ever want, or expect, to hear. Their child on the other line telling them they love them and goodbye. That this may be the last time they ever speak to their child, because a missile is headed straight for their state.
This was a phone call Mike and Denise Hogan received from his daughter on Saturday. His daughter Rachel and her husband live in Oahu and were home when the sirens warning of a missile attack went off. "She kind of opened up and she was bawling and was basically calling to say 'Hey, we are under a missile attack.' So essentially she was calling to say 'We're probably going to die in the next ten minutes.' She called to say she loved us."
Hogan says it was an incredibly hopeless feeling during that phone call. "There's not really a lot you can do, except just say your goodbyes and tell each other that you love each other and say some prayers."
Thankfully for the Hogan's though, Mike says, the terror didn't last too long. "Within a few minutes after she had actually called we got the announcement that it was a false alarm. So, at least for my wife and I we only had maybe five minutes of real peril."
Hogan says he is obviously relieved it was a false alarm, he still doesn't understand why officials would let the public agonize for 38 minutes over the fear of an attack. "I've seen news reports that say they knew within three or four minutes of the original announcement, so how it took 38 minutes...I was shocked."