Case Can Be Made We Deserve Better, and if Not Better, We at Least Deserve Some Answers

It wasn’t a hurricane, so we can’t even call it by name; it’s just the “Kona Storm of December ‘07.” Yet this storm with sub-hurricane-strength wind gusts brought commerce to a halt and left whole communities and tens of thousands of residents without electrical power.

Oceanic Time Warner announced a statewide interruption of all services – Internet telephone, cable TV, email and Internet access itself. Businesses closed and events were cancelled. Downed utility poles isolated communities in the same place where utility poles fell less than two years ago. Dozens of public and private schools, including pre-schools and after-school programs, didn’t open. Bus service throughout Oahu was suspended, temporarily stranding untold numbers of commuters.

Yes, it was windy and trees were uprooted. Roads were blocked, and roofs flew into neighbors’ yards. There's no question it was a strong storm.

But it must be asked: Should a storm with sustained winds far below hurricane strength paralyze our island society the way this one has? Is it inevitable that a tropical storm will knock us down this hard? And is it a given that residents should be left wondering what’s happening because first responders have failed to respond in a timely fashion?

Questions in Search of Answers

• Exactly what are the protocols at the utility companies, civil defense agencies, schools and universities and other governmental departments that guide the quickness of their response to a crisis? How quickly are they expected to contact the emergency broadcast station and start feeding information to the public? (See yesterday’s CHORE post for our suggestion that first responders should be operational at least as quickly as the radio station is ready to take their information.)

• What resources are devoted to system maintenance by the “infrastructure” companies – the utilities, the cable company and the like? What would comparisons show, year-to-year and decade-to-decade?

• Re the utility poles that collapsed on the Waianae Coast: How strong were the winds there? What is the rated wind resistance of those poles? Did the storm’s winds exceed their rating, and if not, why did they fall?

• Since 16 poles fell in the same stretch of road where 13 poles were blown down and blocked the highway in March 2006, what are the plans – if any – to erect even stronger poles there?

• With predictions for a wetter-than-normal winter, have these companies adjusted their operations to account for unusually inclement weather? Has the tree trimming budget item been increased in anticipation of stormy weather that often blows tree limbs into power lines? Is this line item growing, shrinking or idling?

• For the telephone utility: Why do your land lines hum after a rain so much that conversations are difficult, and what’s being done about it? Or is this simply something else to endure without hope of improvement?

• Was it a good decision to shut down TheBus during the storm? Does one bus being struck by lightning in Kaneohe (if that’s really what happened) justify a lockdown on bus service throughout the island? What’s in the SOP?

• Is the Honolulu Police Department’s 911 system robust enough to handle a big emergency? Not even a recording could be reached at times during the storm, let alone a live operator. If a tropical storm can handcuff 911, what can we expect in a hurricane?

Questions for the Public

Have our expectations fallen so low that we just shrug off the massive inconvenience caused by this tropical storm? Is our island society so fragile that a few hours of windy weather can shut down so much of our commerce and so many institutions?

We live in one of the most expensive places in the country. We shell out a great deal of money compared to our mainland friends for the services we rely on, even after a kona storm.

We have to wonder how long Oahu residents will be content to tolerate what looks like a collapse of our infrastructure and services after a relatively minor storm – yes, relatively minor and nothing like a major hurricane. The highest reported gust on Oahu was 70 mph at Schofield Barracks, and sustained winds were far less than that.

Don’t we deserve better, or was the aftermath to the Kona Storm of December ’07 what we should expect?

We’re just asking the questions, but here’s one thing we do know for sure: If we don’t care about any of this, we deserve what we get.