Sunday, March 11, 2007

With a Final Nod to the Dueling Commentaries, We Await the Next Crisis with High Expectations

Today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin may have given us the final round in the barrage between State Civil Defense and CHORE. (Scroll down the letters column to find CHORE's.)

We hope so; this tiff looks less savory the longer it continues, and there’s no reason to sustain the crossfire. Each side has made its points, but we can’t disguise our satisfaction that the Bulletin today saw fit to print our response to Maj. Gen. Robert Lee’s response to CHORE's original commentary about communications failures on October’s Earthquake Sunday.

This ongoing argument about the adequacy of fixes to the emergency communications system presumably will end when the next crisis arrives. We’ll know then whether our first responders reacted quicker and more effectively than they did five months ago, whether they’ve figured out how to contact radio stations without fail and whether those stations have remained on the air.

Moving Beyond Win-Lose

CHORE isn’t interested in winning an argument if “winning” means a repeat of past communications failures. What we’ve attempted to do here over the weeks is sustain a dialogue on how communications can be improved.

We’ve felt all along that the public wasn’t sufficiently involved in discussions about the enhancements. We became increasingly critical of State Civil Defense the more the agency dug in and eventually began firing back at its critics. We still think State CD and the Administration have gone out of their way to avoid a true, meaningful dialogue with citizens. The so-called legislative briefings at the Capitol were laughingly inadequate.

Regarding the recommendations of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee, we really have no idea about the status and priority of those recommendations. No public meetings, remember?

We Do Know This Much

In the next crisis caused by a hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, flood, power blackout or traffic blockage, citizens will have every right to expect a rapid-fire response by Civil Defense and other officials who share emergency communications responsibilities.

We should be able to obtain emergency information across the radio dial, since the medium is available to nearly everyone in the islands. We should expect stations knocked off the air temporarily to resume operations in short order. And when they do, we should expect station personnel to have their “crisis hats” on and not attempt to entertain us during the emergency. (Tip to broadcasters: check out how big city stations on the mainland handle a crisis.)

TV news crawls and other means to contact the hearing impaired and other special needs individuals will have to be in place to ensure their safety, as well.

All this will have to be done without fail. Too many people are on the payroll and presumably planning for all manner of contingencies for things to fall through again as badly as they did in October. First responders can silence their critics by performing with near-perfect excellence the next time we citizens need them.

If it doesn’t happen, they can anticipate another round of Citizens Helping Officials Repond to Emergencies until they get it right.

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