A woman from Steinbach, who is spending three months working in Hawaii, says the missile scare there on Saturday was quite an experience.

An alert went out across the state warning of an incoming ballistic missile. It was soon determined the warning had gone out by mistake.

Lindsay Penner says she didn't get the text alert on her phone so she was blissfully unaware of what was going on as she worked at her job at a hobby farm.

"I was working, I was outside spraying down the driveway, and the owner comes out and makes a motion to stop and he says, 'Go get anyone who is working and get back here.' So I went out, casually going to get the other people that are around and all of a sudden the other workers come flying past me, running like I've never seen them run before. They're going to their tents and their ripping stuff out of their tents and I'm going, 'What are you doing?' And they said, 'Get your passport, there's a bomb."

Penner says none of it made any sense because she had not seen the text. But she grabbed her passport and went with the others to a school across the street which is a meeting point in event of an emergency.

"Some of the girls were crying and saying, 'I don't want to die.' And I'm going, 'Guys, you got a text that said there's some kind of threat, there's nothing to worry about, we'll be okay. But it was definitely a scary time because there were people who were panicked. Luckily we were in a small space, we weren't with a lot of people. I went to find the bathroom and when I came out it was all over and we were leaving."

Penner says a co-worker later showed her the text that had come with the warning.

"It wasn't until later that I saw the actual text that everyone got and I went, 'Holy cow, I'm so glad I didn't get that."

Penner says things quickly settled down and people went back to their work. She is in Hawaii until the end of March on a work experience adventure.