A software glitch mistakenly added Hawaii to a tsunami watch alert sent out globally on Tuesday, an official with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.

"Hawaii was never under (a) watch" for the risk of tsunami after Tuesday’s magnitude-8.0 earthquake near the Santa Cruz Islands, said Victor Sardinha, a geophysicist with the Ewa Beach-based center.

Hawaii automatically fell within a radius that would be at risk based on the quake’s magnitude and location, he said. However, data from the quake led scientists to determine early on that Hawaii would not be affected, Sardinha said.

Nonetheless, the warning center’s messaging software failed to remove Hawaii from the watch list. The error was corrected in another bulletin sent out 20 minutes later.

There’s a separate, local protocol in place for the center to warn Hawaii’s civil defense forces if they need to launch a tsunami evacuation, Sardinha said.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center staff discussed the issue Wednesday and is changing the system to give employees more control in selecting which areas are added to the watch lists, Sardinha added.

Meanwhile, six bodies, including a child’s, have been found in the sodden wreckage left by a tsunami that smashed into villages in the Solomon Islands, flattening dozens of homes in the South Pacific island chain.

The 4-foot-11-inch waves that roared inland on Santa Cruz Island, in the eastern Solomons, on Wednesday local time were too fast to outrun for five elderly villagers and one child, who died after being sucked under the rushing water, said George Herming, a spokesman for the prime minister.

Several other people were still missing and dozens of strong aftershocks were keeping frightened villagers from returning to the coast, Herming said.

The damage appeared to be concentrated to the west side of Santa Cruz, with five villages wiped out, Herming said. Authorities were still struggling to reach the remote area.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.