MISSION: To Ensure the Lahaina Fire Tragedy Will Be the Last Time Hawaii Emergency Management so Poorly Serves the Public

The cause of the August 2023 wildfire that destroyed Lahaina, Maui and killed at least 101 residents is still unknown at this writing. What was immediately obvious was the absence of any effective alert to the public. Authorities failed to activate the so-called "tsunami warning" siren system, even though it could have at least alerted residents to their peril. Many survivors angrily complained they received no warning whatsoever.

Emergency communications planners must stay abreast of best practices in their field, just like doctors, scientists, professionals, and experts in all disciplines. Had officials within the Maui Emergency Management Agency implemented the lessons learned after California's major wildfires in the past decade, they would have been prepared to meaningfully respond to the wildfire's threat to Lahaina,

CHORE and a companion website -- WildfireCrisis.com (loads slowly at the Internet's Wayback Machine archive) -- have advocated major reforms in emergency communications that incorporate a medium hiding in plain sight: AM Radio. Unlike cell phone networks that fires destroy and digital programs that require registration, radio stations rarely fail in a wildfire. No fire can outrun radio signals. 

Here is CHORE's proposed model to vastly improve emergency outreach to the public. It was drafted in 2018 following several emergency management failures to adequately inform citizens about the fires that were closing in on them.

Add radio to the communications plan

Develop plans that specifically designate AM radio broadcast stations as critical communications links during wildfires. This can only work if agencies aggressively publicize the stations (see below).

But don't throw out the tech-reliant channels

Every new commo thing that comes along deserves a seat at the emergency alert table — social media, police cars equipped with high-low sirens (new in California), and more. Use them, but don’t fall in love with them. Radio broadcasts are more accessible and faster than every other method to send alerts. 

Bring back what worked!

You probably have to be at least 30-40 years old to recall the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS), which was phased out in the 1990s. The national system designated at least one emergency broadcast station in each major community. Those stations had emergency electricity generators to stay on the air during power outages. Focus on reenergizing the link between emergency responders and broadcasters.

Publicize, Publicize, Publicize

Citizens need to know where to turn during emergencies to find information that will keep them alive. The EBS network worked because of relentless publicity of and by the designated emergency broadcast stations during the quiet times between emergencies. Officials would routinely remind the public about the station’s link to critical information. The EBS goal was to eliminate confusion and doubt about where citizens can find life-saving information as a crisis emerged.

A way to make this proposed system work during a crisis

Once civilians are in grave danger, as was the case in California's Redding, Wine Country, and Paradise fires, the system of emergency alerts would be activated, but unlike those incidents, AM radio would be an official part of the mix. Public information officers and other official spokespersons (battalion chiefs, incident commanders, etc.) would include the designated station in their outreach. A public information officer (PIO) would be sent to the radio station to be a conduit for evacuation orders from the field straight to the public over the radio. If not actually positioned at the station, PIOs and others would push this critical information to the public over the designated station(s). There’s not a station owner or general manager alive who’d refuse the opportunity of being THE go-to station for news and information critical to the community.

After Lahaina's unimaginable tragedy, agencies are obligated to review their crisis communications plans and ensure they benefit from the well-documented lessons learned in other tragedies.  

Volunteerism on all levels can help repair a broken emergency system. Private organizations and companies with communications expertise (e.g., advertising agencies and public relations firms) have contributions to make. 

All of this must happen in Hawaii. There can be no more excuses, no more deaths due to communications mistakes.

Lessons Learned in the Paradise and other California Wildfires Were Apparently Lost on Maui; Warning Sirens Went Unused in Lahaina Fire, Officials Relied on Networks with History of Failure Elsewhere

 

Hawaii officials have been explaining why Maui's siren network wasn't activated in last week's Lahaina fire, which killed at least 111 people. The explanation attracting the most attention was offered by a Maui official:

“Sirens have not been used for brush fires. It is our practice to use the most effective means of conveying an emergency message to the public during a wildland fire…” He included alerts sent to cell phones as one of those “most effective means.”

That was unfortunate. Mainland agencies have learned that cell phone-based networks – ones used by Maui’s Emergency Management Agency – frequently fail during fires. And they can’t match radio’s coverage and speed. (Evening Update: Citing health concerns, this official has submitted his resignation.)

This same official offered other explanations for not activating Maui’s sirens:

·      “We were afraid that people would have gone mauka. and if that was the case, then they would have gone into the fire.” 

·      “I heard (the wind) was very loud, so they wouldn’t have heard the sirens.”

·      People would have thought there was a tsunami. That’s what sirens are used for.

Those wouldn’t be concerns after an education campaign that would condition the public to turn on their radio to Maui’s emergency broadcaster when they hear sirens. In California, Napa County's grand jury issued a grand jury report after the 2017 Wine Country Fires (pictured) that said “radio saved the day.” The report recommended:

“Napa County should negotiate an agreement, in conjunction with the County’s municipalities, to formally incorporate plans to utilize local radio station KVON into  existing and future Disaster and Hazard mitigation plans in the County by June 30, 2019.”

Hawaii is the most geographically isolated place on earth, but that's no excuse for distancing itself from crisis communications experiences and lessons learned elsewhere.

More than 100 Died in Lahaina Fire after Maui's Crisis Communications Plan Failed

This blog has promoted emergency communication reform since its first post on October 17, 2006. The evidence that reform is desperately needed builds with each wildfire tragedy, and the Lahaina, Maui fire during August 8-9 is the latest. 

A continuing theme here at CHORE: Warning messages intended for a mass audience require a mass medium. No wildfire can outrun a radio broadcast. Radio is the fastest and most accessible mass medium for life-saving messages to the masses. Cell phone networks and other channels are nice to have, but they’re no substitute for fast-as-lightning AM radio, which rarely if ever fails during a wildfire.

This isn’t rocket science, but as we’ve learned repeatedly in the past decade, far too many communications planners just don’t get it. 

 

A Journalist Reports

 

A retired journalist who was vacationing on Maui has provided compelling validation of this blog’s promotion of AM radio as a key component of public agencies’ emergency communications plans.

 

Katy Bachman and her husband were staying 10 miles from Lahaina, Maui when a wildfire destroyed the town. More than 100 people died, and with hundreds still unaccounted for, the final total could be unimaginably much higher. 

 

"We had no idea where the fires were -- or that there even were fires," she said days after returning to the mainland. “We searched for radio stations while we were sitting there charging, and that's when we heard that there were these fires and that Lahaina was being threatened…. There was no cell service and no power.” 

 

Investigations are underway. We’ll eventually know why Maui’s emergency siren network wasn’t activated and whether radio alerts were broadcast. The tragedy that is Lahaina demands reform.

On Second Anniversary of California’s Camp Fire, a Look-Back on Lessons Learned – and Lost – in another Emergency. NorCal Fire Warning Failures Continue, so Let’s See What We Learned in 1982 during Hawaii’s Hurricane Iwa

California’s deadliest wildfire tore through the town of Paradise two years ago on November 8. The Camp Fire killed 85 people and left thousands displaced and grieving for their paradise, lost in the forests of Northern California.

I’ve been campaigning here at CHORE for improved wildfire alerts since even before that fire’s well-documented failures (archived site loads slowly), and I’ve generally avoided using the “I” word in these posts. This campaign isn’t about attracting attention to myself. 

 

But – I do have the kind of hands-on emergency communications experience that appears lacking in far too many California officials charged with emergency response. 

My September 21 post strongly hinted at what hands-on proactivity looks like in calling for “a new way of thinking, of taking action, of shouldering personal responsibility to save lives.” 

Learned Lessons Lost

Hurricane Iwa struck Hawaii in November 1982 and quickly forced me and the rest of Hawaiian Electric Company’s corporation communications staff to learn new lessons in crisis management. 

Once we realized we couldn't reach the media by phone, HECO’s action-oriented communications response included visits to the only radio station still on the air and all three Honolulu television stations. KHON-TV’s video compilation on Hurricane Iwa documented the storm’s damage and some of our communications outreach. 

I wrote a commentary for The Honolulu Advertiser on the 25^th anniversary of that crisis, noting that several lessons learned had been forgotten in the intervening years.

One year before the commentary was published, I launched CHORE – Citizens Helping Officials Respond to Emergencies – because Hawaii officials were demonstrating the kind of incompetence in alerting the public that we’re seeing now among California crisis communicators. If you doubt that assertion, just google “California wildfire alert failures.”

CHORE’s First Post:

Our Motto: It’s a CHORE, but somebody has to do it. 

Our Mission: To improve communications to the public during and after emergencies in Hawaii (and now California, too) by organizing the views of average citizens and submitting their proposals to the appropriate government officials and broadcasters to enhance their performance. 

Our Objective:  To ensure that Hawaii’s (and California’s) emergency response officials are performing at peak capabilities and efficiency during and after community-wide emergencies.

Many survivors of California wildfires since 2017 have angrily complained they never received alerts over mobile phone-based networks or any other medium that their lives were in danger. 

Undoubtedly, scores of victims who didn’t survive those fires perished because officials placed too much faith in high-tech networks that failed to do the job.

If any CalFire or local emergency management officials have found this blog and are still reading, my message to you is to rethink your communications protocols.

As I wrote here at CHORE on September 21, too many of you are not committed to ensuring that citizens actually receive your alerts!  

If your high-tech alerts fail, you fail! Put public information officers inside designated radio stations, work the phones at least as often as you activate your mobile phone alerts, and push life-critical information to citizens using AM radio when their lives are endangered.

Hawaiian Electric enjoyed tremendous public support – immediately following the hurricane and long afterward – simply because we were the first to reach out to them when their lights went out and tell them when they could anticipate restoration of HECO’s power. And we kept at it right up until power was restored two weeks later to the last residences.

Imagine how California citizens will react if you diligently improve your warning protocols to ensure their safety during an era of ever-worsening wildfires. 

You owe it to them to do better! 

Finally, Some Media Focus on Tragic Wildfire Fact: Systems That Warn People about Evacuations Have Dangerous Drawbacks. Millions of Californians Rely on Alerts That May Never Arrive. Another Fact: AM Radio Rarely Fails in a Crisis

 

Taylor Craig stands on the edge of his family's property outside of Vacaville, CA on Oct. 2020. Craig fought off the flames and protected his home after not receiving any evacuation warnings. Photo by CalMatters.

CalMatters, the nonprofit journalism venture based in Sacramento, CA, recently turned its health intern loose to examine why so many wildfire alerts and warnings have failed in California’s 2017-2020 mega-fire season.

 

The resulting 2,700-word-plus article is must-reading for anyone responsible for planning and executing digital messages designed to keep people safe from wildfires.

 

One drawback of these systems is that they often require citizens to sign up or register to receive messages communicated over cell phone networks.

 

Ken Dueker, Palo Alto’s Office of Emergency Services director, told CalMatters: “You’ve got to sign up and, frankly, very few people do…. I don’t blame them because they don’t know about the tool -- they falsely assume the government has these magic, omniscient powers to notify. The public expects us to have more improved tools and more finesse than we currently do.”

 

Wildfire Fact: Systems designed to communicate evacuation warnings to citizens are failing at an alarming rate. Cellular networks fail, towers burn down, responders make mistakes, s--- happens.

 

Not all failures can be anticipated, but the same failures are happening time and again. That leads CHORE to again ask the question this blog posted on September 13:

 

At what point do we begin holding officials responsible for wildfire deaths when they clearly fail to learn from previous warning failures?

 

It’s a serious question that demands attention. When officials acknowledge a warning system’s failures to adequately function during a crisis, citizens deserve to know what government is doing to work around whatever caused those failures.

 

CHORE finds it extraordinary that AM radio is not mentioned even once in this long article. Did officials queried by CalMatters fail to mention radio to the writer? 

Small-town radio stations with local ties and connections could be filling a critical role in wildfire communications. An emergency warning plan involving these stations would emphasize ongoing personal interaction with station staff rather than button-pushing to activate digital alerts. 

 

Public Information personnel in government would be on the phone with station personnel, providing up-to-the-second information on where a fire is, where it appears to be heading, the neighborhoods that require evacuation NOW, and other essential Information citizens require to be safe. 

That’s the critical information citizens now complain they’re not receiving from local government.

 

Public Service Announcements aired on the stations during quiet times between emergencies would educate the public to listen to the station during emergency times.

 

Creating such an ongoing system of cooperation between emergency communicators and local AM radio stations doesn’t require “finesse,” but it does require an Entrepreneurial Spirit that may be absent in government.

No Finesse Required

 

The CalMatters piece quotes officials on why progress is so slow in fixing the warning failure problem. "I'd have to hunt down 130 different utilities," said the Mendocino County Emergency services Coordinator. 

That comment suggests officials are over-thinking the problem. A relationship with one or two radio stations per county could close the information gap.

 

Officials don’t need to give up their digital alerts. They can continue using them, but knowing that those alerts are prone to failure, they rightly can build in AM radio – a virtually failsafe medium – to convey critical information to the public.

 

Making the fixes is not rocket science. AM radio can be an efficient way to work around digital media’s fatal drawbacks. Thinking outside what goes for the current "box" requires a problem-solving entrepreneurial approach that seems hard to find among alert planners.

 

Government owes the public at least that much.

Yet Again, NorCal Residents Flee Wildfires in Panic, with No Warning or Time To Save Valuables; Yet Again, Something's Not Right

 

The news out of California this morning is all about wildfires. Several erupted over the weekend, as covered by the Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Chronicle. The photo was taken early today in Santa Rosa, CA. 

An NPR newscast this morning carried an interview with a Santa Rosa resident whose voice communicated the panic she felt when forced to flee with no warning. 

It will take time to evaluate what went wrong with the warning process, once again. "Blame," and that's what it should be called, may spread over to residents, and it will take time to know why some residents were outside the warning bubble.

But blaming victims is never correct. If blame needs spreading, it must cover those whose warning systems fail to alert residents early enough to allow a less-than-panicked exodus.

Old School Solutions

Air raid sirens in the middle of the night wake people up. Emergency vehicles with European-style high-low sirens can do that, too (some California communities have installed them). AM radio, a CHORE favorite, is an old-school communications medium that is virtually fail-safe and requires no sign-up to receive alerts, as this blog has argued repeatedly.

Reporters presumably will examine how well higher-tech channels performed during these new fires. But if the past is a guide, as reported by our original Wildfire Crisis website (no longer active but archived here), survivors will once again complain about being beyond the reach of warnings that were sent via ineffective channels.

It's a chain that must be broken.

Fixing California’s Wildfire Alert Failures Requires a New Way of Thinking, of Taking Action, of Shouldering Personal Responsibility To Save Lives

 California's 2020 wildfire report likely will include scores of deaths before the last of the fires adds its acreage and fatality numbers to the total.

Since 2017, the death toll from wildfires is above 150, and the state’s historical fire season still has weeks to go as the calendar turns to Fall.

 

CHORE insists that  many – maybe most – of those deaths could have been avoided if warnings had been easily accessible by the victims. Numerous media reports beginning with the Tubbs Fire in 2017 carried accounts of survivors’ angry assertions they received no warning.

 

“Received” is the action word in that sentence. It’s not enough to simply transmit warnings; they must be received to be effective.

 

Too many officials – from warning protocol planners at the State level to county sheriffs – are not committed to ensuring the public receives their alerts. If they were so committed, survivors would not complain of warning failures.

 

A New Way of Thinking

 

And that’s where a mindset shift is desperately needed. We asked in our most recent post here at CHORE: At What Point Do We Begin Holding Officials Responsible for Wildfire Deaths when They Clearly Fail To Learn from Previous Warning Failures?

 

Officials must be committed to implementing systems that do not fail! They must focus on systems that ensure warnings are received and acted upon by people in peril. 

 

Public radio station KQED of San Francisco carried one of the many media reports on wildfire warning failures, this one in Santa Cruz County:

 

“Some residents who barely escaped the latest fast-moving fires say they need a seamless system that crosses county lines and gives clear, useful information about what is happening. They want evacuation maps to accompany written descriptions posted on social media to make it easier to see what areas are in danger, and they want all counties, regardless of size and resources, to give accurate and timely alerts. Some people did not get warnings; others say they went out too late.”

 

CHORE has been advocating just that for years – a seamless system that crosses county lines. That system is called AM Radio, and it’s hiding in plain sight.

 

Commitment to Success

 

Radio is a mass medium that communicates to mass audiences, even those living beyond cell phone coverage. Radio doesn’t require listeners to sign up for a service, as do some systems that rely on cell phone technology. Radio transmitters rarely burn down, as is common with cell phone networks.

 

All radio needs to be an effective wildfire warning system is a commitment by officials to include radio in their schemes to achieve success in communicating alerts. 

 

That commitment is obviously lacking today. Too many officials fail to accept personal responsibility for ensuring messages are transmitted in ways that have a high likelihood of being received.

 

Officials can’t think their job is done when they’ve hit the button to transmit their Wireless Emergency Alerts and text messages over cell phone networks. 

 

Those networks fail. People don't turn on their phones. Their batteries are dead. Whatever, those networks fail to deliver messages that must be received.

Officials must implement virtually fail-safe AM radio as a medium that “crosses county lines” and avoids failure-prone mobile phone networks. See our earlier CHORE posts that describe how such a system could work. Also, go to our Wildfire Crisis website, which no longer is active but is still reachable via The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (be patient as it slowly loads).

 

The most important change of all would be for officials to take personal responsibility to do whatever it takes to ensure success of their wildfire warnings.

 

Success will be achieved only when populations endangered by wildfires actually receive those warnings. 

 

Until then, the only word that accurately describes their efforts is failure.