Hawaii Citizens, You’ve Made a Difference; New Emergency Protocols Respond to Complaints

Maybe the communications problems on Earthquake Sunday were so obvious even a caveman could solve them, but we think grassroots activism had something to do with the changes reported in today’s Honolulu Advertiser (“Alert will come, tsunami or not”).

The paper’s story on emergency communications and preparedness includes State Civil Defense’s repudiation of its own mindset in October that telling the public no tsunami had been generated could have produced panic and confusion.

That’s exactly what State Civil Defense thought would happen, as reported in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on October 18th. CHORE took issue with that assertion the same day (“Common Sense Says Our People Won’t Panic”).

Today’s Advertiser story goes right down the list of improvements we citizens have advocated – television “crawls” and radio station announcements after large quakes when no tsunami has been generated; quicker response using the Emergency Alert System; more emergency generators to keep broadcasters on the air; maintenance of unpublished phone numbers at the stations for use only by emergency communicators, and emphasis on radio as the most ubiquitous information source.

More Work Remains

Not mentioned in the story is a communication channel we’ve been skeptical about – text messaging on cell phones. Maybe that’s still to come, but we still have to question whether any cell towers will survive a category 4 hurricane.

Also not mentioned is whether emergency broadcasters have adjusted their own playbooks on how to deal with emergencies. As noted here at CHORE early and often, emergencies are not “entertainment” and therefore require different broadcasting standards.

So although this is a good start, the job’s far from over. As we told the Advertiser, now we wait to see if these adjustments will work in the next emergency. And we still think officials in charge of emergency communications to the public should meet with the public to discuss these measures and hear what average citizens think about them.

6,335 Days and Counting

One clarification about the Advertiser story: Although I’m identified near the end as “Hawaiian Electric Co. spokesman” (to the dismay of HECO officials, no doubt), that description hasn’t applied since December 1989. “Former spokesman” would have been accurate (and now is in the story's on-line version).