Hearings Accentuate Need for Civil Defense Public Meeting; Legislators Asked To Help

CHORE sent the following email today to the members of the three legislative committees that held hearings earlier this week on Hawaii’s emergency response to the October 15th earthquakes:

Committee members, your hearings this week were a tremendous public service. Thank you for addressing the critical public safety issue of emergency communications effectiveness in our community.

Yesterday’s hearing revealed how lessons learned in emergency situations can be unlearned with the passage of time and turnover of personnel. As HECO's manager of corporate communications and spokesman in the 1980s, I and my colleagues were unable to telephone KGU, the designated emergency station, the night of November 23, 1982 when Hurricane Iwa struck, for the same reason HECO’s current managers were stymied on October15th in calling KSSK:

If you have only the telephone book’s numbers for local radio stations, you may as well have no numbers. You simply can’t get through, especially if the station is encouraging listeners to call in with their anecdotes.

We learned in 1982 that a list of unpublished numbers is essential. We therefore worked with the radio industry in the subsequent months to develop that list of non-published emergency-only numbers and used it on “Black Wednesday,” July 13, 1983, when all of Oahu lost power due to a sugar cane fire in Ewa.

HECO and KSSK obviously have unlearned the lessons of the 1980s. Just as obviously, private and public officials have more game-planning to do for major disaster scenarios. For example, at Monday’s hearing, Major General Lee expressed his complete satisfaction with KSSK’s performance on Earthquake Sunday, a point some of us dispute (see my blog’s post on October 22). When asked what would happen if the station lost power, General Lee noted that KSSK was selected as the emergency station in part because it has its own backup generator and won’t go black.

But what if it does lose power? What’s the backup plan? We heard nothing about a scenario such as a category 4 hurricane that might destroy KSSK’s tower. Military doctrine emphasizes the importance of “defense in depth.” We have no idea what State Civil Defense’s plans are if its first line of defense crumbles.

That’s why my CHORE blog has advocated repeatedly that a public meeting is warranted to hash out all these matters, explain October 15th in detail, answer the public’s questions and demonstrate responsiveness to the public’s concerns. Your assistance is sought in encouraging General Lee and Vice Director Teixeira to conduct such a meeting, ideally in the Capitol Auditorium so as to be convenient to legislators and your staff members.

Aloha and best wishes,