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.