Joe Walker, a 20-year-old University of Hawaii sophomore, saw students sprinting through crowded stairwells inside his Frear Hall dormitory in response to a report of a missile attack Saturday morning, then went outside where masses of panicked people were running “like a marathon just started.”

At the Waimanalo 7-Eleven, “There was a red light and people were beeping their horns for people to go through it instead of stopping, because obviously, they wanted to get home themselves,” said Celeste Russell, 41, of Kaneohe. “So it was bad.”

Across the island at Mililani Mauka Community Park, the alarm prompted the immediate cancellation of 32 youth flag football games, sending families racing for their cars.

“We live on the other side of the island, so we figured, if this is real, what can you do, right?” said Paliku Kahalepuna, 37, who lives in Waikane.

So the family sheltered near the cinder-block bathroom.

“We left our tent up. We left our chairs,” Kahalepuna said. “I guess you could say we were in a mode of panic.”

With nearly 1 million residents and an estimated 100,000 tourists on Oahu on Saturday morning, everyone had a story to share about how they reacted to the 8:07 a.m. report that Hawaii was the target of an imminent missile strike that turned out to be a mistake.

The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency has canceled its monthly drills that warn of a natural disaster — or attack — until it analyzes what happened Saturday.

But the question remains how people across the islands will respond if they get another warning that the unthinkable is about to happen.

“That issue of how do you build trust back — the way you do it at the end of the day is performing correctly,” Mayor Kirk Caldwell said. “It’s incumbent that the next test go smoothly. I believe it will and build trust that way. But it’s something we can’t take lightly, both what occurred today, but also that threat from North Korea. Hopefully that will go away at some point, but we need to protect our citizens from the worst.”

State Rep. Matt LoPresti (D, Ewa Villages-Ocean Pointe-Ewa Beach) found himself doing triple duty at his home in Ewa Beach on Saturday morning: trying to manage information and incoming cellphone calls and texts,calming his two daughters and “saying a ‘Hail, Mary.’”

He believes Hawaii’s emergency alert system now has a credibility problem.

“We were told repeatedly that we have a system in place and to take it seriously,” LoPresti said. “Now people will have lower faith in the emergency management alert system. Now they’re not going to trust that source, and that endangers lives. It’s that simple. If it’s something real, any hesitation can be life or death.”

After the warning of a missile strike, LoPresti and his wife, Julia, grabbed their emergency supplies and hustled their two daughters — ages 8 and 4 — into a bathroom.

“We were under the impression that we were in imminent danger of possible death,” LoPresti said. “My job as Daddy was to try to get them safe and calm, get them focused, say their prayers while I was talking to social media.”

LoPresti could not get through to emergency management officials but had a military contact who said the alert was bogus, which he then repeated via text messages.

LoPresti also faced questions from his daughters, especially the older Nina.

“We told them to pray and they asked why, of course,” LoPresti said. “We said, ‘There’s maybe a missile coming.’ They said, ‘Are we at war, Daddy?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I guess so,’ and she asked why. And I couldn’t give her an answer to that.”

He added: “When you think back on that, it’s a pretty scary situation. I’m really angry, actually.”

April Guillory, 44, of Ewa; her husband, Army Capt. Randall Guillory; and their two daughters went through annual attack drills when they were stationed in Japan and South Korea that included putting on gas masks that had been assigned to them.

But none of the drills “seemed as real as it did today,” April Guillory said Saturday.

The family gathered in their laundry room in the center of their house with their dog, Bella, and sat on the washer and dryer waiting for a missile strike that never happened.

Rain, 17, was used to the drills in Japan and South Korea. But Mia, 9, “was a little more panicky than Rain,” Guillory said. “Mia was pretty shaken up. My husband was in charge of keeping everybody calm.”

Asked if she’ll trust a similar warning in the future, Guillory said, “Our trust really is in our faith. … We were ready to be with God if that was what was going to happen.”

Walker, the UH communications sophomore, like untold others, is looking at Saturday’s false alarm as a reminder to be better prepared for a real attack.

“I’m using this as a wake-up call, definitely,” he said.