Top 10 List Ignores What Affected Most of Us

Thousands without power for days, Waianae Coast residents cut off from the rest of the island, parents scrambling to find babysitters as scores of schools are closed.

What does it take to make the Star-Bulletin's list of the Top 10 Stories of ’07? Maybe what the list tells us is that disruption to the lives of average citizens like December's Kona storm just doesn't register with journalists. Or maybe the inconveniences inflicted on residents have become so routine they don't seem newsworthy.

We're a bit hyper here at CHORE about emergencies, but we have to believe the average person doesn't give a fig about the resignation of the Governor's chief of staff, #8 on the list, or successful missile tests on Kauai, #10. Compare that to having the only highway access to Waianae communities blocked yet again by a wind storm.

Chaos Defined Response to San Francisco Zoo Tragedy; Despite Planning, Execution Is Key

Unless events give a reason to do otherwise, CHORE’s taking a break from these occasional posts for some traveling. As we sign off for 2007, we recommend the recent San Francisco Zoo fiasco as an excellent example of how presumably competent officials can botch an emergency response.

A San Francisco Chronicle story today details the missteps minute by minute, including the declaration of a “Code One” by Zoo security personnel that prevented police and fire department personnel from entering the Zoo to attend to the victims of the tiger mauling!

Read the story and you can’t help wonder whether zoo officials ever rehearsed their emergency plan, which a second Chronicle story examines and concludes had little relevance to what actually went down on Christmas Day.

And that’s the essence of CHORE’s posts over the past 15 months – the necessity to plan for both expected and improbable events and then rehearse every conceivable scenario.

CHORE hopes all your conceivable and inconceivable scenarios in 2008 are good ones.

Tsunami Anniversary Show Has Nothing New; NOVA Recycles Program Already Shown Twice

PBS’s third anniversary remembrance didn’t advance our understanding whatsoever of what might have been done to save some of those hundreds of thousands of lives that were lost in December 2004.

“The Wave That Shook the World” documentary shown in the NOVA time slot Christmas night was aired twice previously, the first time just three months after the event. All the views expressed in the show therefore are nearly three years old.

CHORE’s sister blog – Tsunami Lessons – has banged away consistently since the massive earthquake and tsunami about the complete absence of a plan to use the international news media to quickly disseminate tsunami warnings to remote populations.

The concept is so logical and so low-tech that it has attracted no support from NOAA and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. And that’s a shame – but not nearly as shameful as the lack of foresight and preparation within NOAA that left the Center unprepared to issue a life-saving warning on Christmas Day 2004.

Year-End Review Suggests Some Seemed To Be Open To Criticism, While Others Were Above It

A bright (and quiet) Hawaiian Christmas Day offers reflection time on the state of emergency response in 2007:

• We haven’t had a “big one” this year – a hurricane, tsunami or earthquake (like the October 2006 quake that launched CHORE) to test officials’ and agencies’ ability to respond adequately. Without one – and we’re not wishing for one – we have to take it on faith that civil defense officials have improved their procedures since Earthquake Sunday (see below).
• The “minor one” we did have in early December – a Kona storm with gale-force winds – proved daunting for both Hawaiian Electric Company and the several first-response communicators who were slow in putting what they knew on the airwaves.
• Oahu’s electric utility likely will be under pressure in 2008 to do something relatively dramatic to strengthen its grid on the Waianae Coast. One more episode of fallen polls blocking the only highway access to the coast might be the proverbial back-breaking straw for residents there.
• The falling utility line problem proved more than an inconvenience in November when a man died after a line set fire to his van. HECO will undoubtedly address this issue with inspections and maintenance in ’08 – either voluntarily or under PUC oversight.
• Oahu’s primary emergency broadcaster did a better job following the December storm by switching to “crisis mode” much quicker than it did on Earthquake Sunday. (Maybe our criticisms of its flawed response to the quake-triggered island-wide blackout paid off. Broadcast executives won’t agree, but we’ll think so anyway.)

Campus Communications

• The late October threat against students at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus produced a woefully inadequate response by UH officials. Text messaging is one method to communicate with students and faculty, but using that mode exclusively was a flawed response. Low-tech modes are needed, too -- banging on doors, public address announcements, the campus radio station…whatever it takes.
• Our initial reaction was endorsed by a somewhat surprising survey reported by NPR: college students were shown to be less than enthusiastic embracers of text messaging. That alone – in addition to common sense – should prompt UH officials to produce a new crisis communications plan.
• CHORE’s recommended Standard Operating Procedure: Any threat to the security of the campus community warranting an alert to students and faculty will be disseminated by all available means – text messaging, emails, loudspeakers in buildings and in the campus’s exterior spaces, and broadcasts over KTUH and the commercial stations. A UH student's commentary in the Star-Bulletin argued that students and faculty require information to make decisions about their own personal safety.
• The UH faculty Senate ultimately passed a resolution calling for improved campus communications. We hope to see evidence of same in 2008.

Non-Comprehensive Review

• Finally, this year-end review of emergency response in Hawaii would be incomplete without touching on what launched CHORE in the first place – the breakdown in the flow of information to the public following the October 15, 2006 earthquakes and Oahu power blackout. Although a committee was created two days later to review that response and recommend enhancements, its name was wrong from the start: Without public involvement, the committee couldn’t be called “comprehensive.”
• And the public never did get a seat at the table during the committee’s many meetings over the next year. Worse, CHORE took it on the chops when State Adjutant General Robert Lee decided our criticisms were unjustified. “Frankly, I don’t understand the purpose of the negative, misdirected attention that Carlson has focused on State Civil Defense,” he wrote in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Continuing, he blamed the electric company for the failure of his agency to provide timely emergency information to the public: “This was an information delay, not a failure, and it was thoroughly reported in the news media.”
• Our response (‘Communications Failure’ Becomes ‘Information Delay’ in Orwellian World of State Civil Defense) noted that “we citizens (are) condemned to future communications problems if first responders can’t even acknowledge yesterday’s failures.”

What’s in Store in ’08?

The contretemps with State Civil Defense were a distraction from the real issue: Will the next major emergency result in an exceptionally timely and informative response by those responsible for informing the public? Have first responders adjusted their procedures?

CHORE used the first anniversary of Earthquake Sunday to summarize what went wrong and our hopes for the future, and the "non-comprehensive" committee published its final recommendations for communications enhancements. But with National Guard deployments to the Middle East a higher priority for the Adjutant General and his staff, we may have to wait until the next emergency to know whether all the meetings and all the talking have produced better results.

A “Good Start” Implies More Steps in the Future

CHORE agrees with Honolulu Advertiser columnist Lee Cataluna that Hawaiian Electric’s recent half-page newspaper “apology ad” to Waianae Coast residents was a “good start.”

Since “Helping” is part of CHORE’s charter, we offer this helpful advice: Don’t stop there. We suggested earlier this week that bold steps are needed for HECO to restore its reputation in the area.

Full-on community meetings along the coast would demonstrate the company’s resolve to step up to the criticism and the challenge of improving power reliability in leeward Oahu.

Face-to-face meetings with residents will be infinitely more effective than signed statements published on paper.

Editorials Question Infrastructure’s Adequacy; HECO Can Strengthen Position with Outreach

CHORE first raised questions after last week’s storm about the adequacy of Oahu’s infrastructure, and now both Honolulu newspapers have chimed in editorially, most prominently in today’s Honolulu Advertiser but also in the Star-Bulletin yesterday.

The Advertiser editorial -- “Waianae deserves infrastructure improvements” – noted as we did four days ago that last week’s storm wasn’t even a hurricane and asked its own questions:

“What will happen to isolated areas such as Waianae in the event of a real disaster, like a hurricane? Will HECO's poles collapse again? Will ambulances and other emergency vehicles be able to reach their destinations quickly? Will lack of power hamper residents' ability to get food and water? All of these issues are key to public safety, particularly during a major disaster.”

Hawaiian Electric Company did the right thing after Earthquake Sunday when it briefed the public at the State Capitol on why its system crashed on Oahu. A similar outreach to the public – especially to its customers along the Waianae Coast – seems indicated now.

Beyond being good customer relations, receiving testimony from residents presumably would help the company’s case if it ever chooses the expensive solution of undergrounding utility lines along the coast to reduce or eliminate the “utility pole problem” there.

CHORE’s Focus on Heisman Saturday:

Colt Has Our Respect Everymore!

As Power Comes Back, Residents Ask about Radio Coverage, Poles and Undergrounding

It will take more than a few days for yesterday’s questions to be answered about this week’s kona storm. Residents inconvenienced by the loss of power, road blockages and more are adding questions of their own to the list.

A letter in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is headlined, “Is it finally time to put lines underground?”

“Is it time yet? One dead from a power line dropped on a car. Thousands unable to go to work due to downed lines and poles. Food spoiled. The cost of police handling traffic when lines or poles are down. The costs to individuals, employers, employees, city and state caused by the lack of an effort by Hawaiian Electric to focus on undergrounding grow each time we have even minor storms.”

(The writer implies, as CHORE asserted yesterday, that a relatively minor storm caused this week’s disruption. It’s alarming to think what a category 3 or 4 hurricane could do to this island.)

Hawaiian Electric Company likely will answer “no” to the question. HECO’s position has always been that undergrounding power lines is much more expensive than hanging them overhead. In general, the company buries lines only when required by law and ordinance.

While underground lines may be relatively immune to wind damage, HECO has noted their vulnerability to water damage and the higher degree of difficulty to repair them.

Finding the Right Fix

That said, residents across Oahu – and especially those living on the leeward coast cut off by fallen power poles and lines -- are raising a legitimate issue. As reported yesterday, some of the poles brought down in the storm were replacements for poles that fell in a March 2006 storm.

Steel or composite utility poles might be candidates to replace the wood poles that seem so vulnerable, especially at the traffic choke points along the Waianae Coast and north shore. We have no expertise in this field; readers can use websites such as this one to read about the alleged advantages of composite poles.

Emergency Radio Adequacy

Since CHORE is mostly concerned about emergency communications, comments by a Pupukea resident on Oahu’s north shore caught our attention:

"The biggest problem I see is there is no emergency radio station to go to for information…. It seems the whole state's response is, 'Click on www' to find out. But we don't have power, we don't have Internet, and it's not on the radio. How do we check?"

Radio coverage is indeed spotty on the north shore, but this resident’s quote is “…there is no emergency radio station to go to for information….” and “…it’s not on the radio….”

North shore residents presumably have battery-powered radios available and know that KSSK-AM and FM are the designated emergency stations. KSSK-AM did a good job reporting on the storm’s immediate aftermath (the FM station went off the air). Our inference is that he’s referring to the scarcity of information on the radio following the storm as the hours dragged on overnight and throughout yesterday.

Prolonging the Coverage

As we said after Earthquake Sunday in October 2006, emergency broadcast stations have an obligation to continue their “emergency mindset” as long as significant numbers of residents are still feeling the effects. Big-city radio often elects to “throw out the format” during and after a crisis, meaning music programming is set aside in favor of news coverage, or the mix of news with regular programming is increased.

Thousands of residents were still without power 24-36 hours after the storm pounded Oahu, but programming on the emergency stations was pretty much back to routine aside from drive time. Clear Channel executives undoubtedly will protest, but they certainly have to agree that the product is never perfect.

The Pupukea resident’s quotes in the Star-Bulletin make that clear enough. When he says “…it’s not on the radio…,” that’s exactly the point. The task ahead for radio executives and civil defense officials is to continue refining emergency communications until residents have no reason to complain about the lack of information.

Case Can Be Made We Deserve Better, and if Not Better, We at Least Deserve Some Answers

It wasn’t a hurricane, so we can’t even call it by name; it’s just the “Kona Storm of December ‘07.” Yet this storm with sub-hurricane-strength wind gusts brought commerce to a halt and left whole communities and tens of thousands of residents without electrical power.

Oceanic Time Warner announced a statewide interruption of all services – Internet telephone, cable TV, email and Internet access itself. Businesses closed and events were cancelled. Downed utility poles isolated communities in the same place where utility poles fell less than two years ago. Dozens of public and private schools, including pre-schools and after-school programs, didn’t open. Bus service throughout Oahu was suspended, temporarily stranding untold numbers of commuters.

Yes, it was windy and trees were uprooted. Roads were blocked, and roofs flew into neighbors’ yards. There's no question it was a strong storm.

But it must be asked: Should a storm with sustained winds far below hurricane strength paralyze our island society the way this one has? Is it inevitable that a tropical storm will knock us down this hard? And is it a given that residents should be left wondering what’s happening because first responders have failed to respond in a timely fashion?

Questions in Search of Answers

• Exactly what are the protocols at the utility companies, civil defense agencies, schools and universities and other governmental departments that guide the quickness of their response to a crisis? How quickly are they expected to contact the emergency broadcast station and start feeding information to the public? (See yesterday’s CHORE post for our suggestion that first responders should be operational at least as quickly as the radio station is ready to take their information.)

• What resources are devoted to system maintenance by the “infrastructure” companies – the utilities, the cable company and the like? What would comparisons show, year-to-year and decade-to-decade?

• Re the utility poles that collapsed on the Waianae Coast: How strong were the winds there? What is the rated wind resistance of those poles? Did the storm’s winds exceed their rating, and if not, why did they fall?

• Since 16 poles fell in the same stretch of road where 13 poles were blown down and blocked the highway in March 2006, what are the plans – if any – to erect even stronger poles there?

• With predictions for a wetter-than-normal winter, have these companies adjusted their operations to account for unusually inclement weather? Has the tree trimming budget item been increased in anticipation of stormy weather that often blows tree limbs into power lines? Is this line item growing, shrinking or idling?

• For the telephone utility: Why do your land lines hum after a rain so much that conversations are difficult, and what’s being done about it? Or is this simply something else to endure without hope of improvement?

• Was it a good decision to shut down TheBus during the storm? Does one bus being struck by lightning in Kaneohe (if that’s really what happened) justify a lockdown on bus service throughout the island? What’s in the SOP?

• Is the Honolulu Police Department’s 911 system robust enough to handle a big emergency? Not even a recording could be reached at times during the storm, let alone a live operator. If a tropical storm can handcuff 911, what can we expect in a hurricane?

Questions for the Public

Have our expectations fallen so low that we just shrug off the massive inconvenience caused by this tropical storm? Is our island society so fragile that a few hours of windy weather can shut down so much of our commerce and so many institutions?

We live in one of the most expensive places in the country. We shell out a great deal of money compared to our mainland friends for the services we rely on, even after a kona storm.

We have to wonder how long Oahu residents will be content to tolerate what looks like a collapse of our infrastructure and services after a relatively minor storm – yes, relatively minor and nothing like a major hurricane. The highest reported gust on Oahu was 70 mph at Schofield Barracks, and sustained winds were far less than that.

Don’t we deserve better, or was the aftermath to the Kona Storm of December ’07 what we should expect?

We’re just asking the questions, but here’s one thing we do know for sure: If we don’t care about any of this, we deserve what we get.

KSSK Steps Up to Kona Storm’s Emergency; Spokespeople Still Slow with their Response

Last night’s kona storm was as close as we came to a hurricane this year. Utility poles, trees and boulders reportedly blocked streets and highways around Oahu early today as southwesterly wind gusts in the 60-mph range were recorded on Oahu and Molokai.

Oahu’s designated emergency broadcast station, KSSK, has responded well this time. We tuned in shortly after 3:45 a.m. when our neighborhood’s circuit went out (for the sixth time since November 4th).

Christmas music continued to play except for a short “live” newsroom announcement around 4:10, and Mike Perry went “live” at 4:30 and has been going at it nonstop as of this posting.

The station’s newsroom seemed to be fully activated, with personnel breaking in with reports on school closings, highway reports and other newsworthy items. Overall, this was the Michael W. Perry we remembered from Hurricane Iwa 25 years ago – fully engaged and obviously wearing his “emergency hard hat” today.

Where Were the Responders?

What wasn’t as smooth was the flow of information from first responders. Officials with storm-related information were slow in communicating with the public through KSSK.

Hawaiian Electric Company had been experiencing power outages yesterday and last evening, so the company presumably could have anticipated that thousands of customers would wake up in the dark this morning and need information.

Yet HECO's spokesperson wasn’t heard “live” on KSSK until shortly before 6 a.m., long after many customers began calling the station. Even then, his first two reports were brief and focused only on outages on the windward side, north shore, central Oahu and the leeward coast. Nothing was said about the ongoing blackouts in urban Honolulu, leaving those of us without power since 3:45 wondering whether the company knew about our outage.

HECO sent a second spokesperson to KSSK’s studio, and that was a good move. Perry could turn to HECO’s in-studio representative, a former Advertiser reporter who hit a good sympathetic tone about the public's inconvenience in his reports on the company's efforts to restore power.

Callers complained about the lack of information from the Department of Education. Its spokesman wasn’t on “live” until after 6 a.m. The University of Hawaii’s rep didn’t call until after 6:30. We don’t recall hearing anyone from the civil defense agencies or a Honolulu Police Department spokesperson in the first hours. Callers obviously were displeased, and some urged KSSK to contact the DOE and UH for information.

Keeping Step with KSSK

CHORE’s advice to first responders is to just pick up the phone and call radio stations early and often. How hard is that? More to the point, it’s what first responders should be conditioned to do. This was a major lesson we wrote about recently in our 25th anniversary remembrance of Iwa in the Honolulu Advertiser.

First responders are not information “gatekeepers.” That’s the term for newsroom professionals who decide what’s “news” and what isn’t. Official spokespeople don’t horde information; they exist to disseminate it quickly.

We don’t know what explains the relatively slow response today, but we do have this simple suggestion for all companies and agencies that are expected to communicate information to the public during emergencies:

Be as quick with your response as the official emergency broadcast station – KSSK. If the station was operating at full speed by 4:30 a.m. today, why weren’t you? Help KSSK and other stations keep your customers and citizens informed by planning your response to be as quick as the broadcasters'.

KSSK performed well during and after today’s storm. First responders still have work to do.

What About the Public?

Several callers to KSSK said they couldn’t listen to the station because their power was out – meaning they apparently don’t have a portable radio in the home. That’s pretty amazing, so people:

Go out and buy a cheap battery-powered radio! It will help you stay informed – and keep you off the phone so you're not blocking others with important information they need to convey to KSSK and the public.

Fatality Update: ‘Corroded’ Insulator Faulted in Power Line Fall; HECO Starts its Inspections

Hawaiian Electric says a “corroded metal internal component within the ceramic insulator” contributed to the insulator’s failure, which caused the line to fall and ignite a fire that killed a Wahiawa man in his parked van three days ago.

Mid-Morning Update: A HECO representative told CHORE this morning that the company began inspecting the Wahiawa grid the day after the 7,200-volt line fell, noting that an insulator failure is extremely rare.

Despite the rarity, CHORE believes a system-wide inspection – even if it only involves spot examination of insulators around the island – would give customers some comfort that the Wahiawa tragedy was more likely a fluke accident and not evidence of a wider problem. The public needs reassurance that the high-powered electric grid above our heads isn’t corroding into disrepair.

Whether the news media will give this story its due is problematic; the Star-Bulletin buried HECO’s statement in its Newswatch column today, and the Advertiser ignored it.

Closer to Home

HECO also told CHORE this morning that the power circuits serving the Waialae-Nui Ridge and Ainakoa neighborhoods, which have been plagued by blackouts recently, are being examined by engineers to see what short- and/or long-term actions might be implemented to improve reliability.

That’s good news to those who’ve come to anticipate an outage nearly each time it rains -- five of them in November, but not last night!

Whether a Fluky Accident or Deeper Problem, Power Line Fatality Requires Full Disclosure

You probably never worry about whether the H-1 overpass will flatten your car as you sit at a red light on Nimitz Highway. Overpass failures are so rare we don’t give them a second thought – although last summer’s Minneapolis bridge collapse sometimes crosses our mind.

Same with power lines. We drive under scores if not hundreds of them each time we move around the island. They’re part of the environment that we grudgingly accept, preferring them to be underground when feasible. Power lines are up there, everywhere, and we expect them to stay up there.

When a line does fall, it’s almost always because a pole has been rammed by a car or truck. That we can understand. What’s unsettling is an apparently spontaneous power line fall, like the incident in Wahiawa two days ago that claimed a life.

A van caught fire when hit by a falling 7200-volt line; the occupant suffered third degree burns over 90 percent of his body and died late the same night. A good Samaritan who tried to open the van’s door received a severe electric jolt and was hospitalized today in serious condition.

Is This a Pattern?

This incident might normally be considered an isolated out-of-the-blue rarity, with no reason to dig deeper into a possible ongoing problem. But Hawaiian Electric has had a string of reliability failures lately – including five blackouts in a four-week span in one neighborhood that we’ve written about here.

We don’t know whether the power line tragedy and all these outages are just bad luck or if they represent a pattern of maintenance neglect. What we do know for sure is that the public needs a full explanation of what happened in Wahiawa and what HECO is doing to ensure more of us aren’t electrocuted by falling wires.

Power Line Fall Update: Van Occupant Dies

Yesterday’s incident in Wahiawa that apparently involved a fallen power line has claimed a life. Both the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin have updated their web pages late this morning with this news.

As we suggested earlier today, this tragedy undoubtedly will produce intense scrutiny of Hawaiian Electric Company’s maintenance program – from outside and within.

Latest HECO System Crisis Nearly Kills Two; Multiple Problems Question Grid’s Overall Status

Power outages are one thing, but when equipment failure leaves two innocent people in critical condition, questions must be asked about the general condition of Hawaiian Electric Company’s system.

A man was severely burned when a live 12,000 volt power line fell on his parked van yesterday. A would-be rescuer was shocked and hospitalized in critical condition when he tried to open the van’s door.

According to a HECO spokesman, an insulator holding the line in place had a problem – no further information.

We all live beneath a grid of wires charged with electricity. Now that they’re starting to fall off poles, we have reason to be alarmed.

If this were an isolated incident, yesterday’s emergency might not trigger much concern, but as noted here yesterday, HECO’s system reliability is in a nosedive. We’ve had five outages in our neighborhood since November 4.

Seeing the Big Picture

Numerous outages and failing equipment that nearly killed two people are combining to create a bleak picture of HECO’s operations. It would seem reasonable for HECO to do what the military does after numerous incidents of equipment failure. When aircraft are involved, the Air Force grounds its planes and conducts a thorough review.

HECO isn't expected to “ground” its electric system, but we do hope its managers see the bigger picture of a system that gives the appearance of being in disrepair and requiring special attention.

Another Rain Storm, yet Another Power Outage

Having once called Hawaiian Electric Co. our home away from home, we know it’s no small thing to keep the lights on 100 percent of the time, but what’s with HECO’s reliability these days?

We had another power outage in the early-morning hours today -- our fifth in Waialae since November 4th. It’s gotten to the point that if it rains, we expect to lose electricity, and that can’t be right.

We saw a “trouble truck” leave the vicinity of the Malia Street substation just before 3 a.m. after the power came back. Maybe that was a coincidence, but it’s probable a troubleman corrected some condition or other – an open breaker perhaps – at the substation to restore power.

We always thought Load Dispatch on Ward Avenue could close breakers from a distance using its computer-controlled network. Whatever, the utility’s reliability is in steep decline, and with a wetter than usual winter season predicted, we’re wondering how often we’ll be in the dark.

(11/29 Update: We later bumped into a troubleman and asked about HECO's remote-control capability. He said the great majority of circuit breakers must be manually reset and aren't controlled by Load Dispatch.)

Hawaii Enjoys Trouble-Free Thanksgiving, but San Franciscans Continue Battle over Oil Spill

Residents of the 50th State sometimes think everything is perfect on the other side of the ccean. California does so much so well that it’s almost surprising when officials badly botch an emergency response.

Take the current fight over what went wrong with the big San Francisco Bay oil spill on November 7th. A San Francisco Chronicle page 1 story today covers the verbal battle between the Coast Guard and the City under the headline, “Coast Guard denies calling off S.F. fireboat responding to spill”

It serves as a reminder that no matter how confident first responders may be in their emergency capabilities, events can and often do produce a subpar performance thanks to the human factor.

A Better Thanksgiving

A quarter century ago today many Oahu households cooked their turkeys on the BBQ following Hurricane Iwa's visit two days before Thanksgiving. Today, the Honolulu temperature is 76 with mostly sunny skies, the wind is only 10 mph from the northeast and the traditional football games are on TV.

And throughout Hawaii as families gather at dinner, we have to believe more than a few prayers will end with:

“Go Warriors!”

(Update on 11/24: They did!!)

Another Power Outage after a Drenching, but Radio Outlet Gives Multiple Updates this Time

Another downpour, another power outage in the Ainakoa neighborhood at the kokohead end of the H-1 freeway. That makes four blackouts in the past 16 days, and we have to wonder what makes rain such a challenge for Hawaiian Electric Company these days.

The challenge of communicating about the outage was overcome this time by KSSK and HECO, however -- a big contrast to the news blackout on November 5th. The outage began at 5 a.m., we called it in by 5:03 and KSSK’s first report was at 5:20.

A report 20 minutes later quoted a HECO spokesperson and said the outage was affecting about 200 homes in Ainakoa. This also was a refreshing change in that we heard nothing from HECO on the designated emergency broadcast station on November 5th.

KSSK said traffic lights at Kalanianaole Highway and Ainakoa weren’t working and repeated the outage and power report at 6 o’clock, just when the lights came back on.

We hope HECO figures out what’s causing these multiple outages, but we have to commend Hawaiian Electric and KSSK for telling affected listeners they were aware of the problem and that somebody was trying to fix it.

Column Recalls Iwa’s 25-Year-Old Lessons that More Recent Events Show Have Been Forgotten

We have a commentary in today’s Honolulu Advertiser about emergency response lessons that were lost in the quarter century since our first “modern” hurricane.

CHORE readers are invited to leave comments below with your own remembrances of Hurricane Iwa and what else you think our current crop of crisis communicators should know about emergency response.

Don’t Leave It Up to UH Authorities To Decide if Security Threat Is Dangerous, Says UH Student

Returning to the issue of the University of Hawaii's emergency warning system that we first raised two weeks ago…... The Honolulu Star-Bulletin published a column by a UH student yesterday that's worth a read.

It decries the lack of an adequate campus warning system after someone was overheard threatening to shoot up the campus in late October. Here’s the essence of her argument:

I do not wish to have campus authorities decide whether an incident is potentially dangerous to me. I want to be responsible for determining my own safety by first receiving immediate and adequate notice of potential harm. The man who allegedly made the threat was not apprehended until the following day; therefore, the potential for harm existed while students were in class or in dorms during the period preceding his arrest. This simply is not acceptable.

Both students and UH faculty are speaking out about the lack of an adequate campus-wide warning and are asking for an improved emergency warning system. Let's hope the Faculty Senate's committee takes up the issue seriously in the weeks ahead.

KSSK: Power Outages Reportedly Weren’t Widespread Enough To Mention in the News

We now have additional information about KSSK’s lack of power outage coverage early this morning. CHORE questioned the station's performance today for not mentioning any power outages in its early newscasts, even though outages had been common during the thunderstorms and, according to a Hawaiian Electric recording at its Trouble number (548-7961), they were still happening.

HECO’s message at 4:20 a.m. mentioned 18 communities where outages had been reported. (The list had grown to 26 communities by early this afternoon.) We had no reason to doubt the list’s accuracy; on the contrary, we had reason enough to believe outages were indeed happening in those 18 communities -- from Niu Valley to Mililani Mauka. The reason we called HECO in the first place was that power was out at our home and our entire community of dozens (hundreds?) of other homes.

Except for this: Chuck Cotton, vice president/general manager of Clear Channel Radio Hawaii, told CHORE the following in an email:

“A HECO spokesperson confirmed to our people, very early this morning, that there are no major outages, only isolated individual outages.”

Mr. Cotton vigorously defends KSSK’s reliance on HECO’s alleged downplaying of whatever outages were continuing. CHORE thinks his email deserves additional attention.

A News Judgment Issue

First, looking at KSSK’s performance, it seems to us that plain old news judgment should have produced a story on the power problems during the thunderstorms yesterday, last night and this morning. Mr. Cotton backs his station and says his personnel relied on a HECO spokesperson’s report of minimal problems, but is that how KSSK left it?

If the station’s personnel asked questions about the number of customers still without power, where they were and how long the outages might last, that information wasn’t aired. People getting dressed for work by candlelight presumably would have wanted to know.

We’ve speculated here previously about KSSK’s self image and whether it truly shifts to an emergency mindset quickly enough. The available evidence suggests that this morning's program should have been a mixture of entertainment and community safety information – a mix that was missing.

What About HECO’s Report?

If Mr. Cotton’s people accurately reported HECO’s comment about “isolated individual outages,” something seems amiss with that assessment. We know for a fact that the power problems were not “individual” outages; dozens of homes in our community were dark at 4:30 a.m.

It therefore must be asked: How proactive was HECO in getting the word out to radio stations about the outages that were still happening? With at least 18 communities affected one time or another by lightning, rain and wind, it’s fair to conclude this was an event of some significance for the utility. Significant events presumably should trigger extraordinary efforts to keep citizens informed – both by the utility and by the designated emergency broadcaster.

When newsmakers push information and reporters probe for it, the result is an informed citizenry. It doesn't feel like that happened early today.

Power Outages Abound, but KSSK Doesn’t Mention Any of Them in Today’s 1st Newscasts

Have they learned nothing about emergency communications down at Clear Channel? The station’s morning show hosts just did their first newscast of the morning – at 5:10 a.m. instead of 5.

CHORE knows for a fact that power is out in communities all over Oahu. We had to call Hawaiian Electric at 4:20 to report our own outage and heard the list of outages in all sectors.

But Oahu’s primary emergency broadcaster doesn’t mention any of them individually or all of them collectively in their first newscast of the day. Here’s what’s making news this morning at KSSK in the following order:

The Hollywood writers strike • Oprah in South Africa • Nebraska runaways caught in Mexico • Troubles in Pakistan • (moving to local news) Boulders fall into homes • Problems with waste water discharge into ocean • Superferry could change islands’ lifestyle • No whale watchers for Superferry • State to build homeless shelters • Weather – high surf advisory, temperatures….and that’s all, folks.

You really have to wonder what they’re thinking. Better yet, you really have to believe they’re not thinking. Not only are they locked into a “news elsewhere first” format, no matter the local trauma, they don’t even mention the local trauma.

Then again, KSSK is the station that thought the John Tesh music show was what we citizens needed to hear when half of Oahu was still without electricity on Earthquake Sunday 2006.

Media Council, it’s time to hold another meeting on the media’s response to local emergencies.
**************

5:40 a.m. Update: KSSK's next newscast at 5:30 had essentially the same lineup of stories, and again the closest Perry & Price came to mentioning power outages and massive rain storms was to read the sewage spill story again and add a new one about overflowing manholes. Here's a tip to these two emergency communicators: People using candles to get ready for work and listening to them on portable radios might be interested in hearing what HECO says about the restoration of their power. Just a thought here at CHORE.

***************
6:10 a.m. Update: Still no mention of power outages in the 6 o'clock newscast.

Resolution Notes 'Insufficient Notice' in Alert

The following resolution has been proposed to the Faculty Senate's Committee on Student Affairs for discussion as "old business" at its next meeting on November 21st:

Whereas on Thursday, Oct 25, 2007 a man was overheard threatening to kill 30 students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa; and,

Whereas the UH-M Chancellor's Office limited its notification of this serious threat to the broadcasting of a text message and an email to the university community; and,

Whereas this limited alert seems to have been insufficient notice in view of the serious nature of the threat in question;

Now be it resolved that the Faculty Senate Committee on Student Affairs affirms the need to find better ways to alert the entire campus community in a timely manner whenever a serious security threat arises.

UH Faculty Senate Committee Asked to Probe Better Emergency Communications on Campus

The University of Hawaii Faculty Senate’s Committee on Student Affairs is expected to discuss “Campus Security” as a new-business agenda item when it meets this afternoon.

A committee member sent the following email two days ago to the committee chair:

As reflected in (the 10/29 Honolulu Star-Bulletin) editorial titled “Get out the alert by any means,” I think the University community needs to ask the UH administration some hard questions about how (the 10/25) security threat was handled. In particular, I agree that, as stated in the editorial, “…An incident at the University of Hawaii at Manoa displays the need for better plans to alert those on campus….”

CHORE is advised that if the committee agrees to take up the issue, it will be discussed in depth at the body’s next meeting on November 21.

We hope that’s the outcome of today’s meeting, as questions raised within the UH community are much more likely to produce improved emergency communications than anything written here or elsewhere about campus security.

Star-Bulletin Editorial Supports CHORE’s View: UH Should Use More Communications Channels

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin summarizes its lead editorial today – Get out the alert by any means -- as follows:

"An incident at the University of Hawaii-Manoa displays the need for better plans to alert those on campuses."

Exactly right – as we’ve been saying in our posts since 10/26. The editorial concludes: "While it is difficult to gauge levels of danger without considering each event individually, every person on UH's campuses should be aware of procedures to keep safe." Text messaging, which apparently was the only communications channel UH officials used during last week’s incident, obviously is unable to do that.

Unfortunately, we’ve heard and seen nothing from officials to suggest they are revising their procedures. One could even infer from their public statements so far that they were satisfied with their reliance only on text messaging and apparently no other channels last week.

For the sake of everybody’s personal security on campus, we need to see evidence of a broader perspective up in Manoa – one that realizes TM can’t be the end-all in crisis communications just because it’s wireless. And in that regard, continue reading the next post below.

With Coincidental Timing, NPR Report Says ‘College Students Decline Text-Message Alerts’

The University of Hawaii’s enthusiasm over the use of text messaging to notify students and faculty about emergencies -- an approach CHORE believes is flawed -- needs rethinking in light of a National Public Radio story today about students' use of TM.

UH seemingly has embraced TM as a “higher-tech” medium to alert the campus community during emergencies. Yet less than 48 hours after Thursday’s incident, today’s report on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday” should give UH security officials pause.

You can listen to the report at the program’s website, which has this summary:

"College administrators are finding that students are not rushing to sign up for cell phone text-message alerts. After the Virginia Tech shootings last spring, many campuses felt this was the answer to keeping their students alert to danger, but students don't share their concerns."

Improving the Crisis Plan

UH’s apparently used only text messaging on Thursday to send its alert about the bus passenger overheard muttering about shooting 30 UH students. News reports mentioned no other methodology, and neither did UH spokesman Gregg Takayama’s email to CHORE.

NPR’s report tends to support CHORE's view on how to alert students and faculty about future emergencies:

"Any threat to the security of the campus community warranting an alert to students and faculty will be disseminated by all available means – text messaging, emails, loudspeakers in buildings and in the campus’s exterior spaces, and broadcasts over KTUH and the commercial stations."

We’ve alerted both spokesman Takayama and Dr. Francisco Hernandez, UH Vice Chancellor for Students, about NPR’s report and hope they and other University officials take it to heart as they work to improve their emergency alert system.

In Starkest Terms, Yesterday’s “Shooter” Alert Was a Failure; UH Needs a Better Crisis Plan

This will be a long post of an email exchange based on today's first commentary here at CHORE on what we believe was an inadequate emergency alert to the University of Hawaii community. The first email is from UH spokesman Gregg Takayama, who responded to our message calling attention to CHORE's first post. Our response to Gregg follows his email:

Hi Doug:

Thanks for your concern about emergency communications at the UH Manoa campus. Just to let you know that the email alert system used yesterday is not the only method of emergency communications available to us. Based on information provided to UH campus security by Honolulu police, it was decided that it was not necessary to cancel classes or halt any planned activities at UH Manoa.

If it was necessary to evacuate buildings or to order people to stay inside and lock their doors, we would have used building PA systems and loudspeakers on campus security vehicles to make the announcements. Loudspeakers were installed on all campus security vehicles earlier this year (post-Virginia Tech). We would also have asked for assistance from HPD to do so.

Text-messaging on cell phones is another method of communications that’s being developed, with testing to begin later this year. And in an emergency, we would also enlist help from commercial radio and TV outlets to get word out to our campus community.

I think the underlying theme, Doug, is that we realize no single technology is fool-proof, so our emergency communications range from low-tech loudspeakers (and loud speakers) to the higher-tech. UH Manoa is probably the only campus in the nation to suffer damage from flood, fire, and earthquake in the span of about 3 years. Campus officials with much more experience than me realize that we’re likely to lose power in a disaster, rendering computer email useless; so other means are necessary.

I hope this clarifies a bit what we’re doing at UH Manoa, and what we’re prepared to do, in case of emergencies.

Thanks,
Gregg

Our response:

Gregg, thanks for your email. Here’s the issue as we see it:

Once the University is moved to issue an alert about a possible attack on the campus community, as you were yesterday, UH has an obligation to communicate what it knows as broadly, completely, efficiently and rapidly as possible. From the available evidence, UH didn’t do that.

We already know from published reports and anecdotally that the text message reached only some students and faculty. We don’t know what percentage did not receive it, but it’s not hard to imagine a majority was uninformed of the threat. Therefore, the text message essentially was a failure because too many members of the University community were unaware of the threat.

You allude in your email to other communications channels. UH apparently did not employ them yesterday. Newspaper accounts don’t mention them, and neither does your email. What was the information provided to UH campus security by Honolulu police that led University officials to conclude only a text message was needed but not loudspeakers, not announcements in classes and other buildings, not broadcasts by on-campus KTUH-FM and the commercial stations?

Unlike campus security officials, we don’t have insider information that allows them to nuance menacing threats. Maybe someone who’s overheard muttering to himself on a city bus only warrants a text message and not the other channels available to UH. Frankly, we’re not comfortable with security officials making those nuanced calls. That’s the kind of decision Virginia Tech officials made on their own, with disastrous results.

Here’s our suggestion for your emergency communications SOP:

Any threat to the security of the campus community warranting an alert to students and faculty will be disseminated by all available means – text messaging, emails, loudspeakers in buildings and in the campus’s exterior spaces, and broadcasts over KTUH and the commercial stations.

In other words, the alert level would go from ZERO to HIGH with no intermediate levels. We think this mindset can’t be faulted, whereas the SOP guiding yesterday’s ineffective alert already is under attack. Yesterday’s threat involved potential mass murder, and with the threat-maker’s whereabouts still unknown, UH issued an ineffective alert that may have eluded thousands of individuals on your campus. What possible reason did UH have to downplay the importance of that threat and therefore communicate with half measures to your community?

A final suggestion: Allow students and faculty to make their own decisions about how to react to a threat. If students and faculty members decide to leave or skip class based on a report such as yesterday’s, let them, and don’t penalize them for their absence.

If you’re going to trust personal communications devices such as cell phones with text messaging, take a giant leap and actually trust individual students and faculty members to make good decisions about their personal safety. They deserve that much.

Aloha,

Doug
(A postscript said the email exchange would be posted here at CHORE.)
•••••••••••••••••
We urge University officials to see yesterday's incident as a wake-up call and reason to revise their planning on how to keep the campus community informed about security threats. The current plan is demonstrably inadequate.

UH’s Email Alert Fails the Efficiency Test; Students Themselves Reveal TM’s Weakness

Yesterday’s security alert at the University of Hawaii raises additional questions about the wisdom of relying on text messaging as the primary way to communicate with students and faculty in an emergency.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Mid-Morning Update: CHORE wrote to Dr. Francisco Hernandez, UH Vice Chancellor for Students, and received this reply: "We are all concerned about the safety of our students, staff and faculty. I will bring your email to the attention of the officials on campus who have the responsibility of communicating with our campus during these types of situations."

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

As reported in the Honolulu Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin, a student overheard a bus passenger talking to himself about shooting 30 students. UH officials sent an email to students and faculty urging caution.

Two-Hour Information Gap

Except for the email, there apparently was no system in place to warn the campus community about the would-be shooter. As reported in the Star-Bulletin, some email recipients “were shocked” to learn about the potential threat because they hadn’t checked their email for two hours. Said one student:

"I just got out of class. Oh no! He's planning to shoot 30 students on campus? Oh my goodness. Not too many people actually check their email."

“Not too many people actually check their email.” What more need be said about relying on text messaging to spread emergency alerts?

Low-Tech Solutions Needed

Does UH have a campus loudspeaker capability? We know it has a radio station. Was the alert broadcast over KTUH? What about the mass telephony capability that’s been touted? There’s no mention in the newspaper stories of the alert using any of these media.

Society’s love affair with personal technology is as hot as ever, yet each new emergency raises questions about relying on text messaging as the primary emergency communications channel. Even UH’s spokesman cited its current limitations:

"It's not clear that (cell phone carriers) have the ability to send out 10,000 or 15,000 text messages at the same instance."

Students and faculty can’t tolerate a two-hour delay in being informed about their potential peril. “Not too many people actually check their email.” That’s by a 22-year-old from the heart of the text-messaging generation!

Yesterday’s events revealed UH’s seriously flawed capability to inform the campus about emergencies. Rather than obsessively gather everyone's cell phone number, University planners need to perfect additional channels -- including low-tech loudspeakers and radio -- to alert their community.

PS: We have it on good authority (our wife, a UH student) that ALL of her instructors announce cell phones must be turned off during class. If students are observed text messaging, they're told to turn off the phone. Case closed.

Advertiser Story Captures a Contrite Attitude Among Key Players in Communications Chain

Having been interviewed by the Honolulu Advertiser for its series on emergency preparedness, we waited for the paper’s delivery wondering how it would play the story. Would it focus on comments from the state’s high-gloss press conference on Saturday or dig deeper? The very first paragraph set our mind at ease:

“Persistent questions remain unanswered about the state’s plan to communicate with residents in the event of another devastating natural disaster such as the Oct. 15 quakes, say critics who complained bitterly about what seemed like an information vacuum during the 24-hour outage following the quakes.”

Paragraph 2 highlighted residents’ upset over State Civil Defense’s delay in allying fears about a possible tsunami. Paragraph 4 mentioned HECO’s two-hour delay in explaining why the power was out throughout Oahu, and the following paragraph questioned how information will be given to residents quickly.

Seeing It the Same Way

It’s clear others share at least some of CHORE’s perspective on the 10/15/06 communications failures. It’s also interesting that after their prolonged argumentative defensiveness in the face of criticism of their performance, some of the key players in the communications chain now seem contrite.

The general manager of all Clear Channel stations said the Clear Channel staff has been given new training. “We assessed what we did. We always try to improve. We’re going to work hard to do a better job,” he said.

That refreshing attitude is also a noticeable shift from his earlier somewhat self-satisfied descriptions of how flagship station KSSK performed during the emergency. One would hope it’s evidence of a new emergency mindset among all station personnel, including on-air personalities who seemed to be stuck in entertainment mode during the blackout. (Maybe this is the last time that we’ll recall KSSK’s decision to air the pre-recorded John Tesh show while half the island was still without power.)

HECO says it is assessing ways to prioritize restoring power to media outlets so information can flow quicker, and it has installed a direct communications link to emergency station KSSK. The utility, along with other emergency responders, now has a list of unpublished radio station telephone numbers so its personnel can get through during a crisis. (As noted here several times, that’s a lesson we learned at HECO during Hurricane Iwa 25 years ago!)

Even the State Adjutant General says in this story, “We’re going to get on the air right away,” a concession that State Civil Defense personnel were slow in providing information to the public.

Ah, Yes – the Public

The Advertiser story concludes with our continuing concern that the public has been shut out of the dialogue over how we’re to be served with emergency communications. “This (Comprehensive Communications Review) committee was a committee of insiders. The process still has a weak link until the public has a chance to ask questions.”

CHORE urges fellow citizens with similar concerns to call the Governor’s office to register your support for a public meeting on the emergency response plan.

What Exactly Has Been Updated in EAS Plan?

The first “key recommendation” in the CCRC report says the State’s Emergency Alert System Plan has been updated. One year after the 10/15/06 earthquakes and Oahu’s massive island-wide power outage, these words do not appear in the plan update that's available online: “power,” “outage,” “electricity” and “blackout.”

Just what was updated in this plan? That’s another question to be asked at a future public hearing on the CCRC’s report (see below).

Despite Report, Questions about the Human Element Remain Unexamined on Anniversary

The CCRC’s report released to the media two days ago remains unavailable on-line to the public as this is written in early morning on the one-year anniversary of the Big Island earthquakes and Oahu blackout.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Mid-Morning Update: The CCRC’s report finally was posted online this morning, two days after the committee posted the video of its Saturday press conference. Despite the report's shortcomings (see below,) all citizens concerned about their families’ communications lifeline during an emergency should read it.

First Impressions: Earthquake Sunday last year was a needed wake-up call. The long description of upgrades at the state’s broadcasting stations is impressive, and a number of other improvements undoubtedly enhance emergency communications.

Continuing impression: This report is flawed because the CCRC did not include the public in any organized and meaningful way. One example of where public input is needed is paragraph 8, page 3: “Cell phone text messages. This is where the state wants to go for the future. Working with cell phone companies.”

Why is the CCRC enthused about text messaging? How does it deal with skepticism that major hurricanes could wipe out cell phone networks and that a prolonged power outage would degrade the networks’ capabilities? What percentage of the state’s population uses text messaging? (That’s a statistic that’s undoubtedly floating around somewhere.) What age groups never, sometimes and always use TM? Why is text messaging needed to disseminate information in a state where 99.99% of the population has access to radio? How much money will be required to focus new energy on text messaging?

We don’t know any of the answers because the CCRC and State Civil Defense consistently have refused for the past year to open themselves up to public comment. Their unstated message easily can be interpreted as, “We know best. Go away.”

The Governor should consider this “final” CCRC report to be yet another draft until she concedes that public dialogue will only make the list of recommendations better.

The people know best, Governor. We always thought you believed that, too.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Continuing today's earlier post:
Today’s Honolulu Advertiser carries the second of three days of coverage on the emergency’s aftermath one year ago. Hawaiian Electric issues are the focus today, and tomorrow the paper says its coverage will focus on “State plans for better communications in event of a disaster.”

We’ve already learned about obvious technical communications fixes – alleged updates of the Emergency Alert System (although as we noted yesterday, the latest plan on-line doesn’t show much of an update); a new media center at State Civil Defense headquarters in Diamond Head, and dedicated phone lines to broadcast outlets.

Unexamined as yet in this anniversary’s performance assessment is the human element – how the men and women charged with decision making during a crisis performed and how the protocols they’re meant to follow have been improved.

Some of their decisions and assumptions were weak, such as assuming they could communicate easily using cell phone networks and assuming the public would panic if the word “tsunami” were uttered, even in a message saying no tsunami had been generated. If you’ve forgotten about that gaffe, check out the second commentary posted here at CHORE three days after the earthquakes.

Technical fixes are actually the easiest to make. Changing human behavior to respond more appropriately during a crisis is something much more difficult.

Tomorrow’s Advertiser will make good reading….and so would the CCRC report itself if the State gets around to posting it on-line today for citizens to evaluate on our own.

Emergency Communications Enhancements Should Be Briefed to the Public for Reaction

There’s still no on-line link today to the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee’s report that was submitted yesterday to the Governor. As we noted in last night’s post, the January 5th draft report was available immediately at the Governor’s website; why the final report isn’t similarly available for public scrutiny is a question an inquiring reporter may wish to ask.

We have to rely on media this morning for details, and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s list of “key recommendations for improving emergency communications in the state” apparently summarizes what’s in the report. CHORE was founded in the spirit of Citizens Helping Officials Respond to Emergencies, so let’s take a look at some of the suggestions on that list:

• Update Hawaii Emergency Alert System Plan – That’s definitely a good idea; as CHORE noted 10 days after the 10/15/06 earthquake and power outage, the EAS wasn’t activated until three hours after the emergency began. The Honolulu Advertiser reported that the City didn’t implement the EAS because of “a lack of training and state protocol.” How has the plan been updated in the past year to eliminate these problems? See if you can tell by clicking on the link to the Hawaii State EAS Plan in the left column of the Hawaii State Civil Defense website. The last change, dated 10/26/06, appears to have been an update to a list of phone numbers. Is that it? Are no other EAS changes merited, or have they been made but aren’t available to the public on the web? Those are questions a reporter could ask, and we hope at least one does.

• Utilize cell phone text messaging – Our emergency communications planners continue to advocate use of this new technology for use in hurricanes, tsunamis, floods and other major disasters. Maybe they know from extensive research that the cell phone network has been sufficiently “hardened” to survive category 4 and 5 hurricanes. Maybe the difficulty in keeping the network operating in an extended power outage has been overcome. Maybe they’re convinced a population with the oldest demographics in the nation is well suited for text messaging. Maybe they believe text messaging is an excellent way to keep the hearing impaired community informed during emergencies. Maybe their analysis of these and other issues related to text messaging is in the final report. We really don’t know what to think about text messaging because we haven’t seen the report. We do know this, however: The recommendation to promote text messaging is from a committee whose membership, as we noted in January, includes representatives from Cingular Wireless, Hawaiian Telcom, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless. We aren't surprised TM is on the list.

Next: A Public Hearing on the Plan?

The list continues with suggestions that appear well founded, such as establishing a media/joint information center at Diamond Head crater and installing dedicated phone lines to broadcast stations. Readers can judge the recommendations for themselves, and after you do, CHORE hopes you’ll call the Governor’s office and ask when this plan will be briefed to the public in an open meeting.

It should have happened long ago while the draft was still being assessed. Now that the report itself has been “hardened” in a final version, the committee should have no reticence in discussing it with the audience that emergency communication is supposed to serve.

CCRC Report Goes to Governor and News Media, But for the Rest of Us, We’ll Just Have to Wait

The Comprehensive Communications Review Committee has submitted its report and held its news conference, which you can view and read about it at the Governor’s website.

But you can’t read the report there. Unlike the CCRC’s draft report that was posted online in January, the final report isn’t available to the public as of late Saturday the 13th. A report that purportedly details how the public will be better served in future emergencies is not yet available to the public. You could laugh if it weren't so serious.

Of course, this isn’t unusual, since the public has never been party to the committee’s doings. As CHORE noted in a recent post, the committee was a group of insiders who among themselves and without public scrutiny have concluded what’s best for us.

Here’s the official word on the committee’s doings, as presented at Saturday’s press conference by co-chair Lenny Klompus, the Governor’s senior communications advisor and PR man:

“The Committee is very proud of the report that was put together and that you have right now. The public should feel great confidence in the communications delivered to them accurately and in a timely manner in an emergency based on what the committee was able to do over this last year.”

Just what did the committee do that should make us confident? We don’t know. We’re simply told we should be confident that the same people and agencies who failed so obviously on October 15, 2006 to provide timely emergency communications will do the job properly in the future.

That’s asking a lot. Unanswered at this moment are the questions CHORE posed two days ago about what we hope is in the CCRC’s final report.

Since citizens were not allowed into the committee’s workings and deliberations, it’s completely within our right to demand that this document be made available on the Internet immediately.

We should be confident the Governor will do the right thing...........right?

On the Anniversary of Quake & Blackout Sunday, Do You Feel More Secure or Less Secure?

That’s a political question from another era, but it’s worth asking about emergency readiness as we approach the anniversary of the multiple crisis response failures on October 15, 2006 following a Big Island earthquake.

The Governor-appointed Comprehensive Communications Review Committee (CCRC) is expected to issue its final report this weekend on how to improve future responses. It’s worth recalling some of the lowlights of 10/15/06 and the following months so we can compare the report’s recommendations to what we experienced and later learned about emergency response deficiencies, especially on Oahu.

Living Murphy’s Law

The list of communications-related issues, problems and attitudes that prompted CHORE’s launch and subsequent commentaries begins with the inability to inform citizens of the emergency in a timely manner. (We’ve hyperlinked to CHORE’s earlier posts on these subjects.)

• Power Failure, Communications Failure – As we first noted in a Honolulu Advertiser commentary two days after the blackout and then here at CHORE in our first post, institutions we’ve come to trust and rely on did not respond well to the island-wide power outage. Nearly all radio stations went off the air around 7:15 a.m. and stayed off for hours; some didn’t begin broadcasting until the next day. All but one TV station also went dark on Earthquake Sunday.

The few radio stations with backup generator power apparently hadn’t anticipated how they might immediately switch to alternative programming, such as a pre-recorded tape noting an emergency condition. KSSK, the designated emergency broadcaster, continued its pre-recorded public affairs program for about 45 minutes even as every home on Oahu was without electricity. That evening, with half of Oahu still blacked out, the station returned to its regular programming by airing the John Tesh Radio Show – a remarkable decision in the midst of an ongoing emergency affecting hundreds of thousands of residents. Despite these obvious shortcomings, the State’s Adjutant General later testified before the State Legislature that the station’s performance was "incredible" and “fabulous” – leaving the impression that he could see no room for improvement, which was absurd.

We await the CCRC’s report for evidence that Hawaii’s broadcasters have improved their ability to remain on the air in an emergency. The report should reveal which stations have upgraded their backup power capabilities and what the others are doing to improve their ability to meet their responsibilities to the public. We might also hope for indications that an “emergency mindset” has been adopted to guide the stations’ programming during future emergencies; e.g., are pre-recorded emergency status messages ready to air that would satisfy the public’s craving for information in an emergency? A recorded emergency-related message is preferable to business as usual.

• Expecting Professionalism from First Responders – State Civil Defense dropped the ball on October 15th insofar as fulfilling one of its primary responsibilities – timely communications with the public. CHORE made that point in a Honolulu Star-Bulletin commentary in February and hasn’t backed away from that assertion. The aforementioned Adjutant General chose to attack CHORE in his response to our commentary as he defended his agency’s performance: “This was an information delay, not a failure….”

As we noted in our March 1st response to General Lee: “In other words, it’s not State Civil Defense’s fault that the public didn’t receive information in a timely manner. It was other people’s fault – Hawaiian Electric, the cell phone companies and radio and TV stations without backup generators.” General Lee's views on his agency's failure to carry out a basic responsibility was equally absurd. If a messenger -- State Civil Defense -- fails to foresee predictable problems in delivering a message, the failure rests with the messenger, not with others.

Will the CCRC’s report detail State Civil Defense’s adjustments to its SOP for communicating with the public? In light of the agency’s refusal to admit any shortcomings, that may be too much to expect, but it’s something we the people should be told. Using a phrase the Adjutant General can appreciate, this is need-to-know information. Failure to detail internal communications capabilities and enhancements will render the CCRC report less than satisfactory.

• Those Missing Emergency Sirens – As the Honolulu Star-Bulletin first reported, there are scores of communities throughout Hawaii with inadequate emergency siren coverage. CHORE observed on the same day that it was exceptionally bad judgment for the civil defense agencies to refuse to disclose which communities were not served by the sirens; it took weeks before those communities were identified.

Look to see if the CCRC report tells us anything about plans to fill those gaps.

• The CCRC and the public – A major flaw in this committee’s charter has been the absence of any citizen involvement. To be sure, members of the committee are all citizens of Hawaii, but as we noted here as early as October 18, 2006, no “average” members of the public were appointed to sit on this committee. And since the CCRC’s meetings were not open to the public, we’re put in a position to trust the government once again about what it’s doing to improve emergency communications. The co-chairs, by the way, are two advisors to the Governor and the Adjutant General; CHORE’s suggestion that an independent chair be appointed to enhance the body’s credibility predictably went nowhere.

It strikes us as truly amazing that a body meant to improve communications to the public has never asked members of the public to participate. Equally bewildering has been the news media’s hands-off attitude about this committee, which after all is supposed to be improving how we citizens are informed about life-threatening emergency conditions. Some meetings produced no media coverage whatsoever. To their credit, some journalists who were invited to sit on the committee withdrew when they realized they’d be in a conflict of interest – in essence, making news instead of covering it.


If the CCRC keeps to its announced schedule, its report will be open to public examination on Saturday, October 13th and presumably will receive newspaper coverage the next day. Whether the committee will finally provide the public an opportunity to comment on those proposals in an open hearing remains – as the editorials so often say – to be seen.

Details Thin on What CCRC Thinks We Need

If you want to know what really transpired at yesterday’s meeting of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee (CCRC) – the details of who said what – waiting until mid-October will be a must. You won’t find details in today’s Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin stories.

Stories prepared for the Sunday, October 14th papers will have information on the final report of the CCRC, timed to be released nearly one year after Earthquake Sunday in October 2006.

As for today’s news, this is typical of the reporting:

Meanwhile, media outlets big and small talked about how they plan to get the messages out to the public, many adding or upgrading generators and installing simple land-line phones or satellite phones as an alternative to cell phones.

The sentence is taken from yet another story that gives the appearance of telling us what happened without actually do so. Exactly how do media outlets big and small intend to get the messages out to the public? Which outlets have upgraded their backup capability and which haven’t? (And are reporters writing these details, only to have them excised by an editor somewhere up the chain?)

Note to Editors:

The public needs these details in order to know whether we can trust the emergency responders to do the right thing. They weren’t prepared to keep us informed in October, and we have every reason to be skeptical about their preparations to date.

Finally, we need to ask whether the final report will provide details that will help citizens appreciate which media outlets have done their homework and which haven’t. CHORE doubts the report will include anything potentially embarrassing to anyone. The CCRC at its core is a club of insiders – government insiders, media insiders, communications industry insiders, civil defense insiders. A club of insiders isn’t likely to be tough on one another.

And because only members of the public might have risen to the level of asking tough questions, CHORE and like-thinking citizens are still on the outside and likely to stay there.

Power Outage Sets Stage for Wrap-up Meeting Of State’s Emergency Communications Body

The Comprehensive Communications Review Committee (CCRC) will hold its first meeting in months today, and to put at least some of us in the mood, the power went out last night in Kaimuki and Waialae-Kahala. It wasn’t a big outage – just a few seconds for many of us and less than an hour for the rest, but you had to laugh at the timing.

The CCRC was formed a couple days after the October 15th earthquakes that triggered a massive power outage on Oahu that lasted for up to 24 hours for some residents and half as long for tens of thousands of others.

CHORE lobbied from the start to open the CCRC to public input and attendance. That never happened, and it’s not happening today for reasons best understood by its leadership.

Coming to a Conclusion

Co-Chair Lenny Klompus called CHORE last week in response to our request to receive an invitation and an expanded agenda, which as we noted last month is without detail in its public version. We had every reason to expect our request would be honored, as CCRC Co-Chair Maj. Gen. Robert Lee urged us to request an invitation when he sat on the Honolulu Advertiser's "Hotseat" earlier this month.

Klompus denied the request and almost made the denial sound reasonable. This is merely a wrap-up meeting, he said. “We want to ask the members what have you done within your organization to be better prepared. What are you doing in the short term, and what have you done since October 15th?

“The process now is to come to a conclusion, to get final results of what people have done in the last year. Once this is concluded, we can say who did what. The next step will be to build the foundation for the next meeting.”

The 64-Megawatt Questions

Indeed, what has been done, and who’s done it? How many radio and television stations have added backup generation so they can remain on the air in a power blackout? Which ones are they? Which stations have not done so, and why?

How have stations adjusted their standard operating procedures for emergencies? Have they adopted the seemingly obvious fixes suggested here at CHORE and elsewhere, or are they still caught up in the self-congratulatory mode that was so evident in October?

Has text messaging become the fix du jour, as seemed to be the case when the CCRC issued its preliminary report in January? In a state with one of the oldest demographics in the nation, do our leaders truly expect text messaging to be useful to the majority of citizens? Or is text messaging just another communications medium destined to fail in a category 4 or 5 hurricane?

And what about State Civil Defense? What specifically has this agency done to alter its SOP for communicating in an emergency? The need certainly was obvious on October 15th, and Klompus mentioned a few improvements in our phone call.

It’s All About Serving the Public

Because the public needs to know all of these things, CHORE has to believe the CCRC at long last will recognize its obligation to the public and provide a detailed report on what transpires in today’s meeting.

We doubt, however, that it will be as comprehensive as the committee’s name would imply. We’ll shelve our skepticism if the CCRC actually tells us which broadcasting stations have not upgraded their capability.

Klompus alluded to future CCRC meetings. Will they open to the public at last, perhaps in the State Capitol Auditorium, where Hawaiian Electric Company held its public briefing on October 23rd?

Klompus hedged his answer, but CHORE took that as a “yes.”