Is State’s Ace in the Hole for Crisis Response Really a Call to Jakarta for Emergency Help?

Jet lag undoubtedly has something to do with CHORE’s reaction to the news. Traveling 27 hours over 12 time zones can play tricks with your senses, so at first reading we were skeptical that Hawaii state government was actually asking Indonesia for assistance with its response to future emergencies. But there it is again today in the Star-Bulletin (“Lingle inks Indonesian disaster partnership”) and the Advertiser ("Partnership augments disaster readiness").

Give us another day to get over the lag and we’ll probably have questions about what it all means. In the meantime, we’ll rely on Larry Geller’s Disappeared News blog to ask them, and as usual, Larry asks some good ones.

Setting our initial skepticism aside, maybe some real good can come from the budding relationship. As noted today at The Jakarta Post.com, the deal includes civilian-to-civilian activities that will “focus on domestic emergency readiness, search and rescue operations and improvements in democratic institutions.”

Since Indonesia’s voter participation seems to be about 30 percentage points higher than Hawaii’s, Jakarta might have some democracy-strengthening tips for our local government.

About that CCRC Update

Our Internet connection in France was generally pretty good, and we accessed Honolulu’s online newspapers fairly regularly. Unless we missed it in the past month, though, the State still doesn’t seem to have published an update to the Comprehensive Communication Review Committee’s recommendations, which were released early this year in response to the communications meltdown after the October earthquakes.

As we asked back on May 22 in our only vacation-time post to CHORE, what have local radio stations done to improve their ability to remain functional during a power blackout? That’s a legitimate angle for local journalists to chase.

Speaking of angles, check out our sister blog, Tsunami Lessons, for another angle to this Indonesian story.