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.