Saturday's emergency alert snafu didn't just cause panic in Hawaii, but people on the mainland with loved ones on the island also feared the worst.
Samuel and Madison Rogers are from East Tennessee, but Samuel is in the military and stationed in Hawaii.
The couple has lived on the island for the last two years, but Madison is currently at home in East Tennessee.
"I was like this can't be right, and when it said 'this is not a drill,' right about the time I read that, one of my neighbors rang my doorbell, so I jumped out of bed, ran do the door and I open the door up and he's like 'hey did you get that message,'" Samuel Rogers said. Rogers said that moment is when he realized the alert wasn't a hoax.
He tried to call his wife, but wasn't able to get phone call out. Instead, he texted his wife and asked her to call him. Samuel informed his wife about what was happening and asked her to call his mother since he wasn't able to make calls.
"I called and told her," Madison Rogers said. "I swear she's so strong. She was like 'We're going to start praying, right now.' And she was like, 'It's going to be ok.'"
Madison was more than 4,000 miles away from her husband and felt helpless.
"The feeling of knowing that everyone that I've got so attached to and my husband and my dog and my whole little life, I know there was nothing I could do if I was there, but I wanted to be there," Madison said.
When word spread that the alert was a mistake, the couple said it was hard to believe.
And though the message was sent as an error, they say there is something to learn from it.
"In a sense I think it wasn't a bad thing because it let people know, say it was real, what were your reactions to it?" Samuel said.