Pacific Business News Commentary Suggests ‘No-Nonsense’ Approach to Emergency ‘Casts

Our commentary in the January 23rd edition of Pacific Business News strikes a familiar theme – that the designated emergency broadcast stations have a responsibility to report and inform, not entertain. Here’s the text:

Let’s be honest: The National Weather Service gets it right much more often than wrong. Those “clueless weatherman” jokes are so last century, thanks to today’s array of high-tech tools available to weather forecasters.

When they do get it wrong, the public probably should cut them some slack. The same goes for the officials who relied on severe weather forecasts last week to shut down government offices and schools.

However, one link in the severe weather chain must perform perfectly – the emergency broadcast system. The primary job for designated emergency broadcasters during a crisis is to inform residents about its cause, its likely duration and how to cope and stay safe.

It’s to inform, not entertain, and that’s where today’s chain could use some mending, as many listeners have concluded following Oahu’s island-wide power outage last month.

Emergency station KSSK’s Mike Perry and Larry Price, said to be the nation’s most dominant radio personalities, are exceptionally gifted entertainers who have been number one in their timeslot since taking over for the late Hal Lewis in 1983.

But emergency broadcasting isn’t primarily about entertainment. In addition to being the most influential broadcasters in the state, Perry and Price could be even more valuable during emergencies if they relied less on entertainment and adopted a no-nonsense approach that would help the public understand what’s happening and how to cope.

Here’s what an information-oriented broadcaster could do during future emergencies:

• Tell listeners not to call the station except to report emergencies. KSSK tends to open its phone lines to all callers, and the result is predictably frivolous (fish tank aeration was a big topic last month).

• Use valuable airtime to focus on real-world drama. Dozens of high-rise residents were stuck in elevators during the blackout, and others who rely on electricity-powered respirators were in jeopardy.

Without question, Perry and Price and KSSK are community assets, but we have other assets that could grow into valuable roles during future emergencies. One is non-profit Hawaii Public Radio, whose primary role is public service.

HPR’s journalists would bring an entirely different mindset to emergency broadcasts. For now, however, HPR’s biggest priority is to remain on the air during power outages, something it couldn’t achieve last month.

HPR always is in need of public support, and if emergency broadcast status is ever to be achieved, even more community backing will be required for HPR to add its public service voice to the current mix of entertainment-oriented stations.

The likelihood of future hurricanes, earthquakes and power outages in the islands requires an emergency broadcasting philosophy that emphasizes keeping citizens informed and safe, as well as entertained.

Honolulu communications consultant Doug Carlson previously worked at all-news radio stations in Philadelphia, PA and Los Angeles, CA.

If We ‘Never Learn Less’ as Seminar Gurus Insist, What Was Learned from the Wind that Wasn't?

Having spent three long days volunteering at the Sony Open with another to go, we’re going to keep this short. Plenty has been written already about the predicted big wind that didn’t arrive. But there is something worth wondering about, even briefly:

Was anything learned from what many are calling an over-reaction to weather service predictions of heavy winds yesterday?

One senior civil defense official is quoted as saying if given the same weather information, he’d make the same recommendation to close down schools and government offices. “Given the same factors, that would be the prudent thing to do,” he said.

But first, maybe the prudent thing to do before the next big-wind prediction would be to sit down with the weather service and try to learn something from what just happened.

Put in another context, few military leaders would insist on conducting exactly the same operational maneuver after the first one failed. They’d learn from the failure and plan accordingly.

At a minimum, that’s what citizens expect from their civil defense officials following Friday's non-wind experience.

HECO Says Lightning Caused De. 26 Blackout; July 13, 1983 Outage Deserves Another Look

Hawaiian Electric Company’s explanation on the cause of the December 26-27 Oahu blackout boils down to “unusual lightning strikes.” Both the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin give the story page one treatment.

We have no inside knowledge to dispute HECO’s explanation and, in fact, we’re not disputing it. Lightning apparently was the cause, and without the storm, power presumably would have been uninterrupted.

But we can’t help wondering about whether something designed into the power grid failed to isolate the problem. That issue hasn’t been addressed in any media reports we’ve seen, and far as we can tell, HECO’s representatives have avoided talking about that possibility.

HECO’s explanation suggests lightning strikes created grid instabilities that inevitably required all the generators on the island to shut down. We and others are left to wonder whether those shutdowns truly were inevitable. Is it possible something failed to operate properly that, for example, might have allowed the Honolulu power plant to remain online and provide power to the circuits it serves?

Black Wednesday’s Finding

Oahu experienced an island-wide power outage on July 13, 1983 that a study determined might have been avoided if the system had reacted as it was designed to operate. Both these outages – December’s and back in 1983 – involved unusual “three phase faults.”

Stone & Webster published its report on the “Black Wednesday” outage in 1984. Here’s a reference to that outage from a PUC docket:

“A three phase fault occurred on the Kahe-CEIP 138kV line and then relays mis-operated to trip three additional 138kV lines leading to the system blackout. The relay mis-operation contributed to the blackout, and had the relays operated properly the outage may have been avoided.”

The report goes on to note that the transmission system was vulnerable because two additional 138kV lines were out of service for maintenance. But the “mis-operation” of those relays, or circuit breakers, was seen as key. Our recollection of the incident (as HECO spokesperson at the time) was that the relays were set to react within a third of a second after a disruptive incident, such as the 1983 cane fire that caused the flashover, but should have been set to operate even faster to isolate the problem.

If something could “mis-operate” in 1983, it seems plausible something similar could have happened last month. And that’s all we really want to know about the electric system’s reaction to the lightning: Was the generator blackout truly inevitable, or might something have tripped earlier along the transmission system that would have prevented the collapse.

It would seem highly unlikely that the engineering report eventually published about the December outage will conclude there’s no defense to Acts of God. Someplace, somewhere surely there is a system designer who knows how to keep the system operating, even when He steps in.

Citizens Deserve Better Emergency Response

Creation of a more robust and flexible electric grid on Oahu receives the Honolulu Advertiser’s editorial support today. The recent island-wide blackout that left residents without power for 12 hours or more is discussed as a providential opportunity to not only strengthen the grid against such blackouts but make it capable of accommodating independent power producers more easily.

But let’s not stop there as we clean up after the outage. Questions are being raised by growing numbers of residents about whether emergency communications serves them adequately during our many storms, power outages and other disruptions to the normal order.

Designated emergency broadcaster KSSK-AM and its primary on-air personalities have repeatedly failed to meet their responsibility in delivering responsible and thoughtful emergency communications to a troubled and fearful public.  (The Honolulu Star-Bulletin expressed similar views in a recent editorial.)

More than Minimal

It’s not enough to start a generator and remain on the air, the minimum requirement for an emergency broadcast outlet. Equally important is the content of emergency broadcasts. Without question, serious-minded and fact-based programming is also required during an emergency.

What we get from KSSK and the other Clear Channel-owned stations, however, is more of the same entertainment mindset rather than crisis management. The station’s two-man team seems incapable of switching off their weekday personas and adopting a no-nonsense approach to helping the public understand what’s happening and how to cope.

Many have written letters to the editor and left comments online about how callers with concerns and questions during the recent outage were dismissively laughed off the air. Is it OK to flush the toilet? Will tomorrow’s canoe regattas be cancelled?

The anchor team dismissed such concerns, yet information was aired in the morning that the regattas were in fact cancelled and the Board of Water Supply was urging water conservation.

Dissing the Public

Callers with legitimate concerns should not expect to be ridiculed during emergencies for sport and entertainment or out of habit. Listening to the KSSK during a crisis, one has the feeling the weekday morning show has simply been dropped into the emergency slot – jokes, quips and all.

Taking it further, an emergency broadcaster intent on serving the public would keep its phone lines open for urgent matters and government officials. Instead, KSSK’s team puts no such restriction on its listeners and spends valuable airtime on multiple calls dealing with comparatively less urgent concerns, such as the proper aeration of fish tanks.

Adding to the dysfunction are senior government leaders and civil defense officials who consistently praise KSSK’s performance as if they’ve never heard anything better from an emergency broadcaster. The predictable result is mutual back patting and no impetus for improved results in the next crisis.

Strengthening Hawaii Public Radio’s ability to remain on the air and designating its stations as emergency broadcast outlets would be an improvement over our near-total reliance on Clear Channel. HPR’s tradition of public service and journalism-based broadcasting might even move KSSK and its sister stations toward more a responsible emergency performance.

Community Needs an Alternative to KSSK; Hawaii Public Radio Could Grow into Role

Let’s shift the focus to how emergency broadcasting can be improved and away from KSSK‘s marginal performance during Friday night’s island-wide power outage. Clear Channel’s apparent “entertainment first” philosophy – even during emergencies – poorly serves the public, as many are concluding. (See “comments” beneath stories in the daily papers and in Comments added to our Saturday and Sunday posts, below.)

12/30 Update: Today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin editorial also criticizes KSSK for its performance during the outage.

Would the public be better served if Hawaii Public Radio enjoyed that official status, too? We think so. HPR’s two stations – KHPR and KIPO, both FM stations – already are the state’s undisputed leaders in public affairs programming. Stepping up to emergency broadcaster status seems only logical.

First Things First

HPR’s leadership already has done a fine job upgrading its capabilities, including the recent increase in KIPO’s transmitting power. But the job is far from done; both stations were off the air Friday night, so getting to emergency broadcaster status will take a lot more work. Emergency stations have to stay on the air during emergencies!

General Manager Michael Titterton told a Hawaii Media Council audience last year that “some things just have to be done” to ensure HPR’s stations can operate in a power outage. So as a community, we could get behind HPR to help them achieve that critical first step and then move on to emergency broadcaster status.

News Orientation Needed

KSSK’s emergency coverage doesn’t come close to “journalism.” HPR is all about news and fact-finding, and you have to believe its on-air reporters would have been probing for information on how the outage was affecting critical communities and seeking answers about what (obviously) failed on HECO’s system for the entire island to go dark. As it was, KSSK’s team virtually attacked callers who asked questions of their own. (“Don’t you understand, sir? This is an ISLAND! We’re not connected to a bigger grid! Maybe you should just go back to Ohio….” and so on.)

Another consideration: HPR’s stations are commercial-free, so there’d be no temptation or motivation for the public station to provide kid-glove treatment to a company experiencing a crisis (utilities included) if that company is an advertiser.

We haven’t had time to check into whether some kind of financial subsidy is available to emergency broadcast outlets, but it’s worth looking into to assist HPR with upgrades to its facilities.

Anybody out there feel the same as we do here at CHORE? Feel free to add your comment below; you can be “anonymous” or sign your name.

It's about time for the public interest to come first in emergency broadcasting.

12/30 Update continued: The editorial notes that Mayor Hannemann was the first to tell the public the outage would last 12 hours.  You have to wonder why HECO didn't go public with that information itself.

‘Masters of Disaster' Seem Pleased with Their Performance Despite Obvious Shortcomings

Most of the questions in yesterday’s post were directed at Clear Channel, the owner of several radio stations on Oahu, including KSSK-AM, a designated emergency broadcaster. The questions implied criticism of the response by some first responders. Columnist Lee Cataluna in today’s Advertiser shows we’re not alone in thinking the response should have been better.

As Cataluna notes, KSSK’s response to the outage was initially anchored by Mike Buck, a talk show host on KHVH, another Clear Channel station. We also were impressed by Buck’s businesslike handling of the emergency – straightforward, fact-based and relatively little nonsense.

But that changed within an hour when the weekday morning drive time team of Michael W. Perry and Larry Price took over. Fom that moment on, it might as well have been Tuesday.

Perry and Price deserve accolades as radio entertainers. Their show’s ratings – like that of the legendary “J. Akuhead Pupule” before them on Cec Heftel’s KGMB-AM – are always at the top and may make P&P the most dominant radio show for their market in the country.

But unlike “Aku,” who could turn off the zaniness when the moment demanded journalism, the current team can’t find the off switch. The self-professed “Masters of Disaster” seem immune to suggestions they somehow don’t measure up, bolstered as they are by the praise phoned in by adoring fans. Here’s Perry in today’s Advertiser:

"Larry and I just sort of know what to do. It's not a burden at all. My gosh, it's the best possible use for your radio and our electrons."

No, the best possible use of the station’s airtime as a designated emergency broadcaster would be to serve, not entertain. Rather than encourage calls from listeners on how to aerate fish tanks, the team might have kept lines open or showed some inquisitiveness about any number of crisis scenarios – such as apartment dwellers who were trapped in elevators. The 10 o’clock news Friday night reported on at least 42 such cases even as the outage continued.

Upon Further Review

Two calls to the station illustrate how Perry & Price so often miss an opportunity to serve. A caller inquired about whether the outage would affect the water supply for toilets and such. He was laughed off the air with the observation, “The water’s flowing, isn’t it?” or something close to that. Another caller asked whether the canoe regattas scheduled for Saturday would be cancelled. Again, one of the team seemed incredulous and dismissive. The sun would be shining!

Yet by Saturday morning the Board of Water Supply was urging water conservation, and an Iolani School canoe coach called to say the ILH regatta was cancelled.

The P&P knee-jerk reaction is to play it for laughs rather than treat the emergency like what it is – a time of uncertainty and even trauma for tens of thousands of listeners. As one of the Ps quipped about the blackout on the Windward Side: 

“The only light in Kailua was from the rockets red glare…. The good news is that they’re depleted….”

What would a service-oriented emergency broadcast station do in similar circumstances? One can imagine such a station admonishing the public to NOT call in unless the message is critical. On-air personnel might well keep incoming lines free of all “frivolous” calls so first responders could communicate their messages.

Clear Channel’s response to the above criticism – if it were to respond at all – is likely to be as dismissive as Perry and Price are when the mood strikes them. The company’s top executive told a Media Council gathering in 2007 that the team’s ratings show they must be doing something right.

And to that, we would agree; Perry and Price do their act exceptionally well from 5 to 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday. But in Friday's emergency, the team seemed stuck in a weekday morning mood (right down to answering the phones "Good morning").

And maybe it’s not the celebrities’ fault. Maybe it’s Clear Channel’s philosophy to “be entertaining” in the midst of emergencies. If that’s the case, citizens have a legitimate reason to question whether that's what we need in a crisis.  Dozens of mainland radio stations get serious when the going gets tough.  Hawaii deserves a similar response.

Questions re Oahu Island-Wide Blackout, e.g. ‘What Is the Emergency Broadcaster’s Role?’

The December 26-27 power outage that affected all of Oahu lasted about 15 hours at our house, longer than many neighborhoods but shorter than others. The post-incident analysis has yet to begin, so we’ll confine ourselves to asking some questions.

Questions for Hawaiian Electric

Q: How is it that a lightning strike at the Kahe power plant on the Waianae Coast – if that was the cause – could knock out the entire grid?

Q: Since the islands are isolated from other grids, what measures have been designed into the system to guard against what happened last night?
Q: Why didn’t the system isolate the problem at the Kahe plant and preserve the viability of the Waiau and downtown Honolulu plants?
Q: Why did measures fail that presumably were designed into the system to prevent such an eventuality?
Q: Were circuit breakers timed to react quickly enough to isolate Kahe and protect the rest of the grid? (That was the cause of the island-wide power outage on “Black Wednesday” -- July 13, 1983.)
Q: Did HECO’s load shedding occur according to plan, or did the Waiau and Honolulu plants shut down because load shedding didn’t happen quickly enough?

Questions for Clear Channel

Q: Do the on-air emergency broadcast personalities truly believe island-wide outages are to be expected routinely because Hawaii is not connected to a larger grid?
Q: Have our emergency broadcasters received training from Hawaiian Electric officials to help them grasp the complexities of the grid so they in turn can speak intelligently about power emergencies?
Q: How does KSSK owner Clear Channel believe an emergency broadcast outlet should operate during an emergency?
Q: Is that operating philosophy “entertainment as usual”? Is the station’s award-winning weekday morning team told to adopt an “entertainment” or “emergency” model during power outages?
Q: Should on-air personalities be dismissive of callers who question the electric company’s ability to measure up to reliability standards? I.E., is it their role to defend the utility’s performance? Does management want them to ask probing questions about that performance?
Q: Considering the operational possibilities, would it be in the public interest for an emergency broadcaster to discourage listeners from calling the station except for urgent matters?
Q: Might it be a good operating principle to keep the incoming phone lines open for police messages, government officials’ statements, medical advisories, persons stuck in elevators, and the rest?
Q: Should station ratings made during non-crisis times be used to judge whether an emergency broadcaster has acted in the public interest during an emergency? (Such a justification was used to defend KSSK’s performance following Earthquake Sunday.)
Q: Why did KSSK-FM go off the air repeatedly in the early hours of the outage? As a sister station to the AM designated emergency station, shouldn’t the FM station’s generator operate on demand when required to do so? What tests and rehearsals does the emergency broadcaster conduct to ensure all its stations remain on the air during an emergency?

Questions for State Civil Defense

Q: Did your office attempt to activate the emergency broadcast “interrupt” service that cuts into regular programming across the state? Governor Lingle’s voice came on, then cut out at one point during the evening.

Q. Did that system fail last night?
Q: How much money has been spent over the past two years to upgrade SCD’s emergency communications capability?

Question for the White House

Q: Is Hawaii off limits for President Obama in light of last night’s power blackout?

Listeners have heaped praise on KSSK’s broadcast team, and Clear Channel management is unlikely to take any of these questions seriously. Nevertheless, the public has a right to ask them and demand more from its emergency responders.

That said, we have to note that the City & County’s Emergency Management Center was operational and providing information over the air sooner than just about any other source last night. That’s a good contrast to the criticism it took after the recent flooding.

Citizens demanding better performance can’t hurt and may in fact do some good.

Oahu Ops Center Was Closed at Storm’s Peak

The Advertiser coverage of yesterday’s major storm includes the observation that “city emergency management officials reached between 4 and 6 a.m. appeared caught off guard by the extent of problems stacking up island-wide.”

The Emergency Operations Center wasn’t opened until three hours after heavy rain began pounding Oahu and the weather service issued a flash flood warning.

The story includes officials’ rationale that all such warnings don’t necessarily trigger a full-on response due to budget and other constraints. Nevertheless, most citizens undoubtedly would rather have officials on the job as water 4 feet deep flooded their homes and neighborhoods.

As the saying goes, “you never learn less,” and maybe Oahu officials have learned something from this experience. A page one story that contrasts their response with that of Kauai, which opened its operations center two hours earlier, can be a good teaching point.

Do Crisis Responders Intend To Use Cell Phones?

Yesterday’s AT&T cellular service outage throughout Hawaii makes you wonder how many of our civil defense and other first responders plan to use their cell phone during our next hurricane, flood or power outage to get the word out.

The outage lasted longer than reported in the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin accounts. Our service wasn’t restored fully until close to 5 p.m., making it a 10-hour outage.

Maybe we should just forget about relying on cell phone technology in our next crisis. Yesterday’s prolonged outage creates more doubts about the technology's reliability.

Millions Are Spent on Servicing CD Insiders, but True Need Is a Better Public Information System

The Honolulu Advertiser editorializes today on the need to upgrade the state and county Civil Defense centers, but we’re struck once again by what those upgrades would and wouldn't do.

Have you noticed in earlier media coverage that recent Civil Defense expenditures seem to be for tools and toys to keep officials themselves informed, coordinated and linked in? From the editorial:

The city’s center would coordinate the first responders – ambulances, firefighters and the like – and manage traffic on Oahu. The state’s center would monitor and respond to all the counties’ needs with its own resources, including the National Guard.

Just once we’d like to read about what’s being done to upgrade human software in the emergency communications chain. The big failure in October ’06 when two Big Island earthquakes resulted in a prolonged island-wide power outage on Oahu was CD officials’ inability to communicate efficiently with the public. (First-time visitors to CHORE are directed to our summary of the event more than a year after the fact.)

Officials relied on faulty assumptions – that cell phone networks would work in a power emergency, that they could simply call radio stations to convey information to the public, that emergency broadcasters were prepared to react professionally. The public was left uninformed far too long, and the fix for those human lapses is more training for humans, not necessarily more millions for computers and inter-agency communications.

After a prolonged drought, Hawaii can expect storms this winter, so if our Civil Defense officials haven’t trained and retrained on getting the word out, all those millions on electronic gadgets will be a waste.

UH Schedules Another Emergency Alert by Text But Is Silent on Testing Other Crisis Channels

The University of Hawaii has a test planned of its Emergency Notification System that uses text messaging in a few days. We've become more accepting of TM as a way to communicate in a crisis since earlier posts here, now that we're doing quite a bit of texting. But as suggested here many times, a campus emergency notification can't end with text messaging, especially since there’s some evidence that students on other campuses haven't been all that enthused about signing up for emergency alerts.

The University of Hawaii “Guideline for Emergency Communication Policy and Procedure” alludes to “alternate methods of communications” that can be employed, but note how they’re mentioned:

“In the event of a power outage at the receiver end (when electronic methods are used), this system will be disabled and alternate methods of communication used.”

This suggests the alternate methods aren’t intended for use in the absence of a power outage. Try reading the procedure yourself and see what you think.

Going Full Court Press

We still believe what we wrote here on October 26, 2007 should be the guideline for UH's emergency alert system:

Any threat to the security of the campus community warranting an alert to students and faculty will be disseminated by all available means – text messaging, emails, loudspeakers in buildings and in the campus’s exterior spaces, and broadcasts over KTUH and the commercial stations.

Why WOULDN’T the University use all available means to send an emergency message? It's a slam-dunk certainty that the Emergency Notification System (using group telephone and email) won’t reach everyone. The campus radio station, in-building loud speakers, roving campus patrols with speakers and every other method must be used each and every time there’s a need to communicate about an on-campus crisis.

We just can't imagine it any other way. In fact, Tuesday’s test quite rightly should include ALL of those channels.

What we’d like to know – and will attempt to find out – is how many students and faculty are signed up for the emergency alert system using cell phones. Presuming it’s less than 100 percent, the University needs to take another hard look at its readiness to communicate with all audiences in an emergency.

Just as importantly, it must rid of itself of a mindset that seems fixated on TM and cell phone alerts.

Fall Is Here, Still No Storms; Keep 'em Crossed

Hawaii moved uneventfully from Summer to Fall yesterday, and we've still not recorded a storm of any size during the 2008 hurricane season.

As we all should remember, though, the season extends through November. Iwa in 1982 arrived two days before Thanksgiving, so wood-knocking is still advised.

We've not been posting here for several months simply because the emergency communications issues that originally prompted this blog have been absent, absent any reason to use emergency communications. We trust (for now) that the considerable thought and the millions of dollars that have gone into upgrading emergency response in this state have produced results.

That's something we'll be able to assess if and when storms do pay us a visit. For the record, we hope they don't.

$s for Emergency Foreign Language Broadcasts

Checking in with the Governor’s PR office can turn up something useful now and then, such as yesterday’s press release that she’s released money to local foreign language radio stations to aid communications during emergencies.

Radio stations KZOO and KNDI each is receiving $100,000 “to assist with the implementation of recommendations issued by the Governor’s Comprehensive Communications Review Committee (GCCRC) convened by Governor Lingle following the October 15, 2006 Kiholo Bay earthquakes.”

In case the GCCRC is new to you, here’s how the release describes the committee:

“Members of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee included more than 100 government officials from state, county and federal agencies; owners, general managers and publishers from print, broadcast, radio and Internet media statewide; representatives from telecommunications providers; and editors and reporters who were ‘on the ground’ gathering information and reporting on the day of the earthquake.”

At the risk of seeming a tad churlish, we’ll point out one again – as we did when the committee was formed and repeatedly since then – that that the CCRC included nearly everyone but members of the public, the people who were ill-served by emergency communications and communicators after the earthquakes. It was a major oversight that never sank in with the CCRC’s leadership.

We continue to make the point that public should have been included on the CCRC, because the next time an after-action committee is formed to see what could be done to better serve Hawaii residents, the people should be included in the process.

Time To Dust Off Blog as 'cane Season Nears

Blogs that focus on one issue -- like this one and our Tsunami Lessons blog -- run the risk of losing steam and things to say once they've been said over and over again. And that's OK as long as the problems that originally prompted the blogs have been fixed.

We'd like to think Hawaii officials respond to emergencies better now than they did in October 2006 when we started CHORE. Same with our tsunami warning blog; we stopped posting there on the third anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, but you can bet we'll be back with more comment if PBS or the Discovery Channel show that "Wave that Shook the World" documentary again! (Read our 12/27/07 post to see what we mean.)

We've put CHORE on hold since early April, but we're nearing the six-month hurricane season in the Pacific. We hope nothing stronger than a gale blows this way, but if any of the three or four hurricanes predicted for the season do come close to Hawaii, we expect our officials to be 100-percent efficient in alerting the public and responding to the crisis.

And we'll probably have something to say about it here. For now, check out today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin editorial on hurricane season.

“Scream and Shout” Seems To Be Accepted Protocol to Get NG's Attention in a Flight Crisis

Air traffic controllers who need to alert military authorities about a possible in-flight emergency have been forewarned: Go crazy on the phone, maybe something like this:

“Hello, National Guard? Help, Help, HELP!!!

Or so it would seem from the Associated Press story in today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin. “There was no expression of concern….” says a military commander of the controllers’ call about the unresponsive go! airlines cockpit crew on February 13th.

The FAA is now investigating whether the pilots were asleep as the jet overflew its destination, and the Hawaii National Guard is sorting out its non-response to the FAA’s call that might have scrambled the Guard’s jets to investigate.

“If there’s a case of even a hint of a communications breakdown, we nave to solve this,” says the commander – something we’ve been saying since CHORE’s start.

Tsunami Warners Back Text Messaging for Hearing Impaired, but What’s the Backup?

Repeating the point of our February 29th post, text messaging has it place but is flawed as an emergency notification channel.  Now that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and State Civil Defense are pushing TM to alert the hearing impaired, we'll make the point again.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin has a story today on Tsunami Awareness Month, and here's what it says about TM:

"A text messaging system also was created by Civil Defense to inform deaf people, government officials and emergency responders about a tsunami watch or warning.  The system involves sending text messages via e-mail, cellular phones and pagers.... so far, about 43 deaf people are in the system. Officials hope to increase that figure.  About $180,000 in funding was appropriated from the Department of Homeland Security for the pilot program...."

TM won't reach all hearing impaired, so once again we have reason to be wary when experts seem determined to see TM as "the answer" in emergency warning.  It isn't.  Officials need to keep working on backups so preparedness doesn't depend on cell phones and pagers working in an emergency for any segment of the population to be notified.  

Our limited perspective suggests that the hearing impaired should set up their own low-tech networks of neighbors, friends and relatives who can do what it takes to warn them after an alert is "sounded."

Text Messaging Has a Role in Emergencies, but UH Needs Much More To Reach Everyone

Many University of Hawaii students text message one another to stay in touch, but as a key component of UH’s emergency notification procedure, TM is sorely lacking.

Today’s Honolulu Advertiser story lays it out plainly enough: “…UH officials expect only 10 percent of the students to sign up” for TM alerts. Doesn’t that say it all about TM’s role in emergencies?

CHORE made this same point four months ago by quoting a National Public Radio report:

"College administrators are finding that students are not rushing to sign up for cell phone text-message alerts. After the Virginia Tech shootings last spring, many campuses felt this was the answer to keeping their students alert to danger, but students don't share their concerns."

It should come as no surprise to UH officials that students here apparently feel the same. Whether they “don’t care enough” about emergency notification – as one official is quoted in today’s story – isn’t the point. UH must use information channels that actually work!

The Love Affair with Technology

The Advertiser story notes that officials are taking steps beyond TM, but here again, technology is seen as a solution. A warning siren would be “…designed to alert faculty, staff and students and direct them to the UH Web site for more information.”

Always it’s about technology -- the web, TM, wifi. We love technology, too, but let’s get real about its limitations. We’re talking about potentially life-saving information that must be communicated to virtually everyone on campus. Do administrators really believe the Web would be effective? Sure, it's ONE way to communicate, but only one.

Tech-oriented administrators may not want to admit it, but low technology has a major role. Nowhere in the story do officials mention good old-fashioned loud speakers in campus buildings. They don’t mention using the campus radio station or how off-campus broadcasters could relay security messages.

Calling Common Sense

In other words, emergency communications is too important to leave to high-tech gurus. We need a heavy dose of common sense, and while we're at it, the public also needs to see UH's complete emergency communications plan for evidence that common sense is at work.

Shortly after a recent test of text messaging among UH’s faculty, we were told by a UH official that the test had been a success. How do you know, we asked. Because we received the message, was the answer. How many faculty and staff didn’t receive it? The official paused slightly, then said she didn’t know.

Unless UH has created a web of information channels to its community, we have to expect many faculty, staff and students will be ignorant about a potentially life-threatening situation. And that’s not good enough.

No Blinking Devices Means Reliability Was Perfect During Trip; a Tip for Wai`anae Coast

After the string of power outages at our place late in the year, it was a pleasant surprise to return from several weeks on the road to find no blinking clocks, radios, cable boxes, microwaves, ovens, amplifiers or coffee makers. Whatever was plaguing our circuit, Hawaiian Electric seems to have figured it out.

Speaking of HECO and reliability, we saw during our travels that the utility has proposed undergrounding transmission and distribution lines along Farrington Highway in Wai`anae as a work-around for the downed power line problem.

Retired HECO engineer Alan Lloyd suggested in his letter in the Advertiser on January 22 that steel poles would be preferable to burying the lines. Lloyd is one of those exceptionally knowledgeable and practical people you like to have around with a second opinion when knee-jerk solutions are suggested to solve a problem.

It’s true that undergrounding utility lines would beautify the Coast (it would beautify my street, too), but as Lloyd suggests, there may be bigger issues to consider. Here’s his letter:

STEEL POLES A BETTER SOLUTION FOR WAI'ANAE

As an engineer with some local utility system planning experience, I have a recommendation for the electric transmission lines serving the Wai'anae Coast.

I would strongly recommend that HECO be permitted to replace the wooden poles along Farrington Highway that failed during severe wind storms during the past two years with modern steel poles designed for hurricane force winds.

Steel poles have a good record on Kaua'i and on Guam, which has severe hurricane exposure. Also, there is an excellent example of a steel pole power line carrying two transmission circuits and one distribution circuit from Kailua-Kona to Kona airport.

The installation of a steel pole system will offer several advantages over converting these existing transmission circuits to underground, including much less disruption of traffic on Farrington Highway, the only road serving Wai'anae; much less possibility of disturbing iwi in the area; and for a given amount of investment, much more protection from future wind storms because many more miles of transmission lines can be converted to steel poles in the Wai'anae area than could be placed underground.

Alan S. Lloyd
Kailua

Top 10 List Ignores What Affected Most of Us

Thousands without power for days, Waianae Coast residents cut off from the rest of the island, parents scrambling to find babysitters as scores of schools are closed.

What does it take to make the Star-Bulletin's list of the Top 10 Stories of ’07? Maybe what the list tells us is that disruption to the lives of average citizens like December's Kona storm just doesn't register with journalists. Or maybe the inconveniences inflicted on residents have become so routine they don't seem newsworthy.

We're a bit hyper here at CHORE about emergencies, but we have to believe the average person doesn't give a fig about the resignation of the Governor's chief of staff, #8 on the list, or successful missile tests on Kauai, #10. Compare that to having the only highway access to Waianae communities blocked yet again by a wind storm.

Chaos Defined Response to San Francisco Zoo Tragedy; Despite Planning, Execution Is Key

Unless events give a reason to do otherwise, CHORE’s taking a break from these occasional posts for some traveling. As we sign off for 2007, we recommend the recent San Francisco Zoo fiasco as an excellent example of how presumably competent officials can botch an emergency response.

A San Francisco Chronicle story today details the missteps minute by minute, including the declaration of a “Code One” by Zoo security personnel that prevented police and fire department personnel from entering the Zoo to attend to the victims of the tiger mauling!

Read the story and you can’t help wonder whether zoo officials ever rehearsed their emergency plan, which a second Chronicle story examines and concludes had little relevance to what actually went down on Christmas Day.

And that’s the essence of CHORE’s posts over the past 15 months – the necessity to plan for both expected and improbable events and then rehearse every conceivable scenario.

CHORE hopes all your conceivable and inconceivable scenarios in 2008 are good ones.

Tsunami Anniversary Show Has Nothing New; NOVA Recycles Program Already Shown Twice

PBS’s third anniversary remembrance didn’t advance our understanding whatsoever of what might have been done to save some of those hundreds of thousands of lives that were lost in December 2004.

“The Wave That Shook the World” documentary shown in the NOVA time slot Christmas night was aired twice previously, the first time just three months after the event. All the views expressed in the show therefore are nearly three years old.

CHORE’s sister blog – Tsunami Lessons – has banged away consistently since the massive earthquake and tsunami about the complete absence of a plan to use the international news media to quickly disseminate tsunami warnings to remote populations.

The concept is so logical and so low-tech that it has attracted no support from NOAA and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. And that’s a shame – but not nearly as shameful as the lack of foresight and preparation within NOAA that left the Center unprepared to issue a life-saving warning on Christmas Day 2004.

Year-End Review Suggests Some Seemed To Be Open To Criticism, While Others Were Above It

A bright (and quiet) Hawaiian Christmas Day offers reflection time on the state of emergency response in 2007:

• We haven’t had a “big one” this year – a hurricane, tsunami or earthquake (like the October 2006 quake that launched CHORE) to test officials’ and agencies’ ability to respond adequately. Without one – and we’re not wishing for one – we have to take it on faith that civil defense officials have improved their procedures since Earthquake Sunday (see below).
• The “minor one” we did have in early December – a Kona storm with gale-force winds – proved daunting for both Hawaiian Electric Company and the several first-response communicators who were slow in putting what they knew on the airwaves.
• Oahu’s electric utility likely will be under pressure in 2008 to do something relatively dramatic to strengthen its grid on the Waianae Coast. One more episode of fallen polls blocking the only highway access to the coast might be the proverbial back-breaking straw for residents there.
• The falling utility line problem proved more than an inconvenience in November when a man died after a line set fire to his van. HECO will undoubtedly address this issue with inspections and maintenance in ’08 – either voluntarily or under PUC oversight.
• Oahu’s primary emergency broadcaster did a better job following the December storm by switching to “crisis mode” much quicker than it did on Earthquake Sunday. (Maybe our criticisms of its flawed response to the quake-triggered island-wide blackout paid off. Broadcast executives won’t agree, but we’ll think so anyway.)

Campus Communications

• The late October threat against students at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus produced a woefully inadequate response by UH officials. Text messaging is one method to communicate with students and faculty, but using that mode exclusively was a flawed response. Low-tech modes are needed, too -- banging on doors, public address announcements, the campus radio station…whatever it takes.
• Our initial reaction was endorsed by a somewhat surprising survey reported by NPR: college students were shown to be less than enthusiastic embracers of text messaging. That alone – in addition to common sense – should prompt UH officials to produce a new crisis communications plan.
• CHORE’s recommended Standard Operating Procedure: Any threat to the security of the campus community warranting an alert to students and faculty will be disseminated by all available means – text messaging, emails, loudspeakers in buildings and in the campus’s exterior spaces, and broadcasts over KTUH and the commercial stations. A UH student's commentary in the Star-Bulletin argued that students and faculty require information to make decisions about their own personal safety.
• The UH faculty Senate ultimately passed a resolution calling for improved campus communications. We hope to see evidence of same in 2008.

Non-Comprehensive Review

• Finally, this year-end review of emergency response in Hawaii would be incomplete without touching on what launched CHORE in the first place – the breakdown in the flow of information to the public following the October 15, 2006 earthquakes and Oahu power blackout. Although a committee was created two days later to review that response and recommend enhancements, its name was wrong from the start: Without public involvement, the committee couldn’t be called “comprehensive.”
• And the public never did get a seat at the table during the committee’s many meetings over the next year. Worse, CHORE took it on the chops when State Adjutant General Robert Lee decided our criticisms were unjustified. “Frankly, I don’t understand the purpose of the negative, misdirected attention that Carlson has focused on State Civil Defense,” he wrote in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Continuing, he blamed the electric company for the failure of his agency to provide timely emergency information to the public: “This was an information delay, not a failure, and it was thoroughly reported in the news media.”
• Our response (‘Communications Failure’ Becomes ‘Information Delay’ in Orwellian World of State Civil Defense) noted that “we citizens (are) condemned to future communications problems if first responders can’t even acknowledge yesterday’s failures.”

What’s in Store in ’08?

The contretemps with State Civil Defense were a distraction from the real issue: Will the next major emergency result in an exceptionally timely and informative response by those responsible for informing the public? Have first responders adjusted their procedures?

CHORE used the first anniversary of Earthquake Sunday to summarize what went wrong and our hopes for the future, and the "non-comprehensive" committee published its final recommendations for communications enhancements. But with National Guard deployments to the Middle East a higher priority for the Adjutant General and his staff, we may have to wait until the next emergency to know whether all the meetings and all the talking have produced better results.

A “Good Start” Implies More Steps in the Future

CHORE agrees with Honolulu Advertiser columnist Lee Cataluna that Hawaiian Electric’s recent half-page newspaper “apology ad” to Waianae Coast residents was a “good start.”

Since “Helping” is part of CHORE’s charter, we offer this helpful advice: Don’t stop there. We suggested earlier this week that bold steps are needed for HECO to restore its reputation in the area.

Full-on community meetings along the coast would demonstrate the company’s resolve to step up to the criticism and the challenge of improving power reliability in leeward Oahu.

Face-to-face meetings with residents will be infinitely more effective than signed statements published on paper.

Editorials Question Infrastructure’s Adequacy; HECO Can Strengthen Position with Outreach

CHORE first raised questions after last week’s storm about the adequacy of Oahu’s infrastructure, and now both Honolulu newspapers have chimed in editorially, most prominently in today’s Honolulu Advertiser but also in the Star-Bulletin yesterday.

The Advertiser editorial -- “Waianae deserves infrastructure improvements” – noted as we did four days ago that last week’s storm wasn’t even a hurricane and asked its own questions:

“What will happen to isolated areas such as Waianae in the event of a real disaster, like a hurricane? Will HECO's poles collapse again? Will ambulances and other emergency vehicles be able to reach their destinations quickly? Will lack of power hamper residents' ability to get food and water? All of these issues are key to public safety, particularly during a major disaster.”

Hawaiian Electric Company did the right thing after Earthquake Sunday when it briefed the public at the State Capitol on why its system crashed on Oahu. A similar outreach to the public – especially to its customers along the Waianae Coast – seems indicated now.

Beyond being good customer relations, receiving testimony from residents presumably would help the company’s case if it ever chooses the expensive solution of undergrounding utility lines along the coast to reduce or eliminate the “utility pole problem” there.

CHORE’s Focus on Heisman Saturday:

Colt Has Our Respect Everymore!

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.

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.

KSSK Steps Up to Kona Storm’s Emergency; Spokespeople Still Slow with their Response

Last night’s kona storm was as close as we came to a hurricane this year. Utility poles, trees and boulders reportedly blocked streets and highways around Oahu early today as southwesterly wind gusts in the 60-mph range were recorded on Oahu and Molokai.

Oahu’s designated emergency broadcast station, KSSK, has responded well this time. We tuned in shortly after 3:45 a.m. when our neighborhood’s circuit went out (for the sixth time since November 4th).

Christmas music continued to play except for a short “live” newsroom announcement around 4:10, and Mike Perry went “live” at 4:30 and has been going at it nonstop as of this posting.

The station’s newsroom seemed to be fully activated, with personnel breaking in with reports on school closings, highway reports and other newsworthy items. Overall, this was the Michael W. Perry we remembered from Hurricane Iwa 25 years ago – fully engaged and obviously wearing his “emergency hard hat” today.

Where Were the Responders?

What wasn’t as smooth was the flow of information from first responders. Officials with storm-related information were slow in communicating with the public through KSSK.

Hawaiian Electric Company had been experiencing power outages yesterday and last evening, so the company presumably could have anticipated that thousands of customers would wake up in the dark this morning and need information.

Yet HECO's spokesperson wasn’t heard “live” on KSSK until shortly before 6 a.m., long after many customers began calling the station. Even then, his first two reports were brief and focused only on outages on the windward side, north shore, central Oahu and the leeward coast. Nothing was said about the ongoing blackouts in urban Honolulu, leaving those of us without power since 3:45 wondering whether the company knew about our outage.

HECO sent a second spokesperson to KSSK’s studio, and that was a good move. Perry could turn to HECO’s in-studio representative, a former Advertiser reporter who hit a good sympathetic tone about the public's inconvenience in his reports on the company's efforts to restore power.

Callers complained about the lack of information from the Department of Education. Its spokesman wasn’t on “live” until after 6 a.m. The University of Hawaii’s rep didn’t call until after 6:30. We don’t recall hearing anyone from the civil defense agencies or a Honolulu Police Department spokesperson in the first hours. Callers obviously were displeased, and some urged KSSK to contact the DOE and UH for information.

Keeping Step with KSSK

CHORE’s advice to first responders is to just pick up the phone and call radio stations early and often. How hard is that? More to the point, it’s what first responders should be conditioned to do. This was a major lesson we wrote about recently in our 25th anniversary remembrance of Iwa in the Honolulu Advertiser.

First responders are not information “gatekeepers.” That’s the term for newsroom professionals who decide what’s “news” and what isn’t. Official spokespeople don’t horde information; they exist to disseminate it quickly.

We don’t know what explains the relatively slow response today, but we do have this simple suggestion for all companies and agencies that are expected to communicate information to the public during emergencies:

Be as quick with your response as the official emergency broadcast station – KSSK. If the station was operating at full speed by 4:30 a.m. today, why weren’t you? Help KSSK and other stations keep your customers and citizens informed by planning your response to be as quick as the broadcasters'.

KSSK performed well during and after today’s storm. First responders still have work to do.

What About the Public?

Several callers to KSSK said they couldn’t listen to the station because their power was out – meaning they apparently don’t have a portable radio in the home. That’s pretty amazing, so people:

Go out and buy a cheap battery-powered radio! It will help you stay informed – and keep you off the phone so you're not blocking others with important information they need to convey to KSSK and the public.

Fatality Update: ‘Corroded’ Insulator Faulted in Power Line Fall; HECO Starts its Inspections

Hawaiian Electric says a “corroded metal internal component within the ceramic insulator” contributed to the insulator’s failure, which caused the line to fall and ignite a fire that killed a Wahiawa man in his parked van three days ago.

Mid-Morning Update: A HECO representative told CHORE this morning that the company began inspecting the Wahiawa grid the day after the 7,200-volt line fell, noting that an insulator failure is extremely rare.

Despite the rarity, CHORE believes a system-wide inspection – even if it only involves spot examination of insulators around the island – would give customers some comfort that the Wahiawa tragedy was more likely a fluke accident and not evidence of a wider problem. The public needs reassurance that the high-powered electric grid above our heads isn’t corroding into disrepair.

Whether the news media will give this story its due is problematic; the Star-Bulletin buried HECO’s statement in its Newswatch column today, and the Advertiser ignored it.

Closer to Home

HECO also told CHORE this morning that the power circuits serving the Waialae-Nui Ridge and Ainakoa neighborhoods, which have been plagued by blackouts recently, are being examined by engineers to see what short- and/or long-term actions might be implemented to improve reliability.

That’s good news to those who’ve come to anticipate an outage nearly each time it rains -- five of them in November, but not last night!

Whether a Fluky Accident or Deeper Problem, Power Line Fatality Requires Full Disclosure

You probably never worry about whether the H-1 overpass will flatten your car as you sit at a red light on Nimitz Highway. Overpass failures are so rare we don’t give them a second thought – although last summer’s Minneapolis bridge collapse sometimes crosses our mind.

Same with power lines. We drive under scores if not hundreds of them each time we move around the island. They’re part of the environment that we grudgingly accept, preferring them to be underground when feasible. Power lines are up there, everywhere, and we expect them to stay up there.

When a line does fall, it’s almost always because a pole has been rammed by a car or truck. That we can understand. What’s unsettling is an apparently spontaneous power line fall, like the incident in Wahiawa two days ago that claimed a life.

A van caught fire when hit by a falling 7200-volt line; the occupant suffered third degree burns over 90 percent of his body and died late the same night. A good Samaritan who tried to open the van’s door received a severe electric jolt and was hospitalized today in serious condition.

Is This a Pattern?

This incident might normally be considered an isolated out-of-the-blue rarity, with no reason to dig deeper into a possible ongoing problem. But Hawaiian Electric has had a string of reliability failures lately – including five blackouts in a four-week span in one neighborhood that we’ve written about here.

We don’t know whether the power line tragedy and all these outages are just bad luck or if they represent a pattern of maintenance neglect. What we do know for sure is that the public needs a full explanation of what happened in Wahiawa and what HECO is doing to ensure more of us aren’t electrocuted by falling wires.

Power Line Fall Update: Van Occupant Dies

Yesterday’s incident in Wahiawa that apparently involved a fallen power line has claimed a life. Both the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin have updated their web pages late this morning with this news.

As we suggested earlier today, this tragedy undoubtedly will produce intense scrutiny of Hawaiian Electric Company’s maintenance program – from outside and within.

Latest HECO System Crisis Nearly Kills Two; Multiple Problems Question Grid’s Overall Status

Power outages are one thing, but when equipment failure leaves two innocent people in critical condition, questions must be asked about the general condition of Hawaiian Electric Company’s system.

A man was severely burned when a live 12,000 volt power line fell on his parked van yesterday. A would-be rescuer was shocked and hospitalized in critical condition when he tried to open the van’s door.

According to a HECO spokesman, an insulator holding the line in place had a problem – no further information.

We all live beneath a grid of wires charged with electricity. Now that they’re starting to fall off poles, we have reason to be alarmed.

If this were an isolated incident, yesterday’s emergency might not trigger much concern, but as noted here yesterday, HECO’s system reliability is in a nosedive. We’ve had five outages in our neighborhood since November 4.

Seeing the Big Picture

Numerous outages and failing equipment that nearly killed two people are combining to create a bleak picture of HECO’s operations. It would seem reasonable for HECO to do what the military does after numerous incidents of equipment failure. When aircraft are involved, the Air Force grounds its planes and conducts a thorough review.

HECO isn't expected to “ground” its electric system, but we do hope its managers see the bigger picture of a system that gives the appearance of being in disrepair and requiring special attention.

Another Rain Storm, yet Another Power Outage

Having once called Hawaiian Electric Co. our home away from home, we know it’s no small thing to keep the lights on 100 percent of the time, but what’s with HECO’s reliability these days?

We had another power outage in the early-morning hours today -- our fifth in Waialae since November 4th. It’s gotten to the point that if it rains, we expect to lose electricity, and that can’t be right.

We saw a “trouble truck” leave the vicinity of the Malia Street substation just before 3 a.m. after the power came back. Maybe that was a coincidence, but it’s probable a troubleman corrected some condition or other – an open breaker perhaps – at the substation to restore power.

We always thought Load Dispatch on Ward Avenue could close breakers from a distance using its computer-controlled network. Whatever, the utility’s reliability is in steep decline, and with a wetter than usual winter season predicted, we’re wondering how often we’ll be in the dark.

(11/29 Update: We later bumped into a troubleman and asked about HECO's remote-control capability. He said the great majority of circuit breakers must be manually reset and aren't controlled by Load Dispatch.)

Hawaii Enjoys Trouble-Free Thanksgiving, but San Franciscans Continue Battle over Oil Spill

Residents of the 50th State sometimes think everything is perfect on the other side of the ccean. California does so much so well that it’s almost surprising when officials badly botch an emergency response.

Take the current fight over what went wrong with the big San Francisco Bay oil spill on November 7th. A San Francisco Chronicle page 1 story today covers the verbal battle between the Coast Guard and the City under the headline, “Coast Guard denies calling off S.F. fireboat responding to spill”

It serves as a reminder that no matter how confident first responders may be in their emergency capabilities, events can and often do produce a subpar performance thanks to the human factor.

A Better Thanksgiving

A quarter century ago today many Oahu households cooked their turkeys on the BBQ following Hurricane Iwa's visit two days before Thanksgiving. Today, the Honolulu temperature is 76 with mostly sunny skies, the wind is only 10 mph from the northeast and the traditional football games are on TV.

And throughout Hawaii as families gather at dinner, we have to believe more than a few prayers will end with:

“Go Warriors!”

(Update on 11/24: They did!!)

Another Power Outage after a Drenching, but Radio Outlet Gives Multiple Updates this Time

Another downpour, another power outage in the Ainakoa neighborhood at the kokohead end of the H-1 freeway. That makes four blackouts in the past 16 days, and we have to wonder what makes rain such a challenge for Hawaiian Electric Company these days.

The challenge of communicating about the outage was overcome this time by KSSK and HECO, however -- a big contrast to the news blackout on November 5th. The outage began at 5 a.m., we called it in by 5:03 and KSSK’s first report was at 5:20.

A report 20 minutes later quoted a HECO spokesperson and said the outage was affecting about 200 homes in Ainakoa. This also was a refreshing change in that we heard nothing from HECO on the designated emergency broadcast station on November 5th.

KSSK said traffic lights at Kalanianaole Highway and Ainakoa weren’t working and repeated the outage and power report at 6 o’clock, just when the lights came back on.

We hope HECO figures out what’s causing these multiple outages, but we have to commend Hawaiian Electric and KSSK for telling affected listeners they were aware of the problem and that somebody was trying to fix it.

Column Recalls Iwa’s 25-Year-Old Lessons that More Recent Events Show Have Been Forgotten

We have a commentary in today’s Honolulu Advertiser about emergency response lessons that were lost in the quarter century since our first “modern” hurricane.

CHORE readers are invited to leave comments below with your own remembrances of Hurricane Iwa and what else you think our current crop of crisis communicators should know about emergency response.

Don’t Leave It Up to UH Authorities To Decide if Security Threat Is Dangerous, Says UH Student

Returning to the issue of the University of Hawaii's emergency warning system that we first raised two weeks ago…... The Honolulu Star-Bulletin published a column by a UH student yesterday that's worth a read.

It decries the lack of an adequate campus warning system after someone was overheard threatening to shoot up the campus in late October. Here’s the essence of her argument:

I do not wish to have campus authorities decide whether an incident is potentially dangerous to me. I want to be responsible for determining my own safety by first receiving immediate and adequate notice of potential harm. The man who allegedly made the threat was not apprehended until the following day; therefore, the potential for harm existed while students were in class or in dorms during the period preceding his arrest. This simply is not acceptable.

Both students and UH faculty are speaking out about the lack of an adequate campus-wide warning and are asking for an improved emergency warning system. Let's hope the Faculty Senate's committee takes up the issue seriously in the weeks ahead.

KSSK: Power Outages Reportedly Weren’t Widespread Enough To Mention in the News

We now have additional information about KSSK’s lack of power outage coverage early this morning. CHORE questioned the station's performance today for not mentioning any power outages in its early newscasts, even though outages had been common during the thunderstorms and, according to a Hawaiian Electric recording at its Trouble number (548-7961), they were still happening.

HECO’s message at 4:20 a.m. mentioned 18 communities where outages had been reported. (The list had grown to 26 communities by early this afternoon.) We had no reason to doubt the list’s accuracy; on the contrary, we had reason enough to believe outages were indeed happening in those 18 communities -- from Niu Valley to Mililani Mauka. The reason we called HECO in the first place was that power was out at our home and our entire community of dozens (hundreds?) of other homes.

Except for this: Chuck Cotton, vice president/general manager of Clear Channel Radio Hawaii, told CHORE the following in an email:

“A HECO spokesperson confirmed to our people, very early this morning, that there are no major outages, only isolated individual outages.”

Mr. Cotton vigorously defends KSSK’s reliance on HECO’s alleged downplaying of whatever outages were continuing. CHORE thinks his email deserves additional attention.

A News Judgment Issue

First, looking at KSSK’s performance, it seems to us that plain old news judgment should have produced a story on the power problems during the thunderstorms yesterday, last night and this morning. Mr. Cotton backs his station and says his personnel relied on a HECO spokesperson’s report of minimal problems, but is that how KSSK left it?

If the station’s personnel asked questions about the number of customers still without power, where they were and how long the outages might last, that information wasn’t aired. People getting dressed for work by candlelight presumably would have wanted to know.

We’ve speculated here previously about KSSK’s self image and whether it truly shifts to an emergency mindset quickly enough. The available evidence suggests that this morning's program should have been a mixture of entertainment and community safety information – a mix that was missing.

What About HECO’s Report?

If Mr. Cotton’s people accurately reported HECO’s comment about “isolated individual outages,” something seems amiss with that assessment. We know for a fact that the power problems were not “individual” outages; dozens of homes in our community were dark at 4:30 a.m.

It therefore must be asked: How proactive was HECO in getting the word out to radio stations about the outages that were still happening? With at least 18 communities affected one time or another by lightning, rain and wind, it’s fair to conclude this was an event of some significance for the utility. Significant events presumably should trigger extraordinary efforts to keep citizens informed – both by the utility and by the designated emergency broadcaster.

When newsmakers push information and reporters probe for it, the result is an informed citizenry. It doesn't feel like that happened early today.

Power Outages Abound, but KSSK Doesn’t Mention Any of Them in Today’s 1st Newscasts

Have they learned nothing about emergency communications down at Clear Channel? The station’s morning show hosts just did their first newscast of the morning – at 5:10 a.m. instead of 5.

CHORE knows for a fact that power is out in communities all over Oahu. We had to call Hawaiian Electric at 4:20 to report our own outage and heard the list of outages in all sectors.

But Oahu’s primary emergency broadcaster doesn’t mention any of them individually or all of them collectively in their first newscast of the day. Here’s what’s making news this morning at KSSK in the following order:

The Hollywood writers strike • Oprah in South Africa • Nebraska runaways caught in Mexico • Troubles in Pakistan • (moving to local news) Boulders fall into homes • Problems with waste water discharge into ocean • Superferry could change islands’ lifestyle • No whale watchers for Superferry • State to build homeless shelters • Weather – high surf advisory, temperatures….and that’s all, folks.

You really have to wonder what they’re thinking. Better yet, you really have to believe they’re not thinking. Not only are they locked into a “news elsewhere first” format, no matter the local trauma, they don’t even mention the local trauma.

Then again, KSSK is the station that thought the John Tesh music show was what we citizens needed to hear when half of Oahu was still without electricity on Earthquake Sunday 2006.

Media Council, it’s time to hold another meeting on the media’s response to local emergencies.
**************

5:40 a.m. Update: KSSK's next newscast at 5:30 had essentially the same lineup of stories, and again the closest Perry & Price came to mentioning power outages and massive rain storms was to read the sewage spill story again and add a new one about overflowing manholes. Here's a tip to these two emergency communicators: People using candles to get ready for work and listening to them on portable radios might be interested in hearing what HECO says about the restoration of their power. Just a thought here at CHORE.

***************
6:10 a.m. Update: Still no mention of power outages in the 6 o'clock newscast.

Resolution Notes 'Insufficient Notice' in Alert

The following resolution has been proposed to the Faculty Senate's Committee on Student Affairs for discussion as "old business" at its next meeting on November 21st:

Whereas on Thursday, Oct 25, 2007 a man was overheard threatening to kill 30 students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa; and,

Whereas the UH-M Chancellor's Office limited its notification of this serious threat to the broadcasting of a text message and an email to the university community; and,

Whereas this limited alert seems to have been insufficient notice in view of the serious nature of the threat in question;

Now be it resolved that the Faculty Senate Committee on Student Affairs affirms the need to find better ways to alert the entire campus community in a timely manner whenever a serious security threat arises.

UH Faculty Senate Committee Asked to Probe Better Emergency Communications on Campus

The University of Hawaii Faculty Senate’s Committee on Student Affairs is expected to discuss “Campus Security” as a new-business agenda item when it meets this afternoon.

A committee member sent the following email two days ago to the committee chair:

As reflected in (the 10/29 Honolulu Star-Bulletin) editorial titled “Get out the alert by any means,” I think the University community needs to ask the UH administration some hard questions about how (the 10/25) security threat was handled. In particular, I agree that, as stated in the editorial, “…An incident at the University of Hawaii at Manoa displays the need for better plans to alert those on campus….”

CHORE is advised that if the committee agrees to take up the issue, it will be discussed in depth at the body’s next meeting on November 21.

We hope that’s the outcome of today’s meeting, as questions raised within the UH community are much more likely to produce improved emergency communications than anything written here or elsewhere about campus security.

Star-Bulletin Editorial Supports CHORE’s View: UH Should Use More Communications Channels

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin summarizes its lead editorial today – Get out the alert by any means -- as follows:

"An incident at the University of Hawaii-Manoa displays the need for better plans to alert those on campuses."

Exactly right – as we’ve been saying in our posts since 10/26. The editorial concludes: "While it is difficult to gauge levels of danger without considering each event individually, every person on UH's campuses should be aware of procedures to keep safe." Text messaging, which apparently was the only communications channel UH officials used during last week’s incident, obviously is unable to do that.

Unfortunately, we’ve heard and seen nothing from officials to suggest they are revising their procedures. One could even infer from their public statements so far that they were satisfied with their reliance only on text messaging and apparently no other channels last week.

For the sake of everybody’s personal security on campus, we need to see evidence of a broader perspective up in Manoa – one that realizes TM can’t be the end-all in crisis communications just because it’s wireless. And in that regard, continue reading the next post below.

With Coincidental Timing, NPR Report Says ‘College Students Decline Text-Message Alerts’

The University of Hawaii’s enthusiasm over the use of text messaging to notify students and faculty about emergencies -- an approach CHORE believes is flawed -- needs rethinking in light of a National Public Radio story today about students' use of TM.

UH seemingly has embraced TM as a “higher-tech” medium to alert the campus community during emergencies. Yet less than 48 hours after Thursday’s incident, today’s report on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday” should give UH security officials pause.

You can listen to the report at the program’s website, which has this summary:

"College administrators are finding that students are not rushing to sign up for cell phone text-message alerts. After the Virginia Tech shootings last spring, many campuses felt this was the answer to keeping their students alert to danger, but students don't share their concerns."

Improving the Crisis Plan

UH’s apparently used only text messaging on Thursday to send its alert about the bus passenger overheard muttering about shooting 30 UH students. News reports mentioned no other methodology, and neither did UH spokesman Gregg Takayama’s email to CHORE.

NPR’s report tends to support CHORE's view on how to alert students and faculty about future emergencies:

"Any threat to the security of the campus community warranting an alert to students and faculty will be disseminated by all available means – text messaging, emails, loudspeakers in buildings and in the campus’s exterior spaces, and broadcasts over KTUH and the commercial stations."

We’ve alerted both spokesman Takayama and Dr. Francisco Hernandez, UH Vice Chancellor for Students, about NPR’s report and hope they and other University officials take it to heart as they work to improve their emergency alert system.

In Starkest Terms, Yesterday’s “Shooter” Alert Was a Failure; UH Needs a Better Crisis Plan

This will be a long post of an email exchange based on today's first commentary here at CHORE on what we believe was an inadequate emergency alert to the University of Hawaii community. The first email is from UH spokesman Gregg Takayama, who responded to our message calling attention to CHORE's first post. Our response to Gregg follows his email:

Hi Doug:

Thanks for your concern about emergency communications at the UH Manoa campus. Just to let you know that the email alert system used yesterday is not the only method of emergency communications available to us. Based on information provided to UH campus security by Honolulu police, it was decided that it was not necessary to cancel classes or halt any planned activities at UH Manoa.

If it was necessary to evacuate buildings or to order people to stay inside and lock their doors, we would have used building PA systems and loudspeakers on campus security vehicles to make the announcements. Loudspeakers were installed on all campus security vehicles earlier this year (post-Virginia Tech). We would also have asked for assistance from HPD to do so.

Text-messaging on cell phones is another method of communications that’s being developed, with testing to begin later this year. And in an emergency, we would also enlist help from commercial radio and TV outlets to get word out to our campus community.

I think the underlying theme, Doug, is that we realize no single technology is fool-proof, so our emergency communications range from low-tech loudspeakers (and loud speakers) to the higher-tech. UH Manoa is probably the only campus in the nation to suffer damage from flood, fire, and earthquake in the span of about 3 years. Campus officials with much more experience than me realize that we’re likely to lose power in a disaster, rendering computer email useless; so other means are necessary.

I hope this clarifies a bit what we’re doing at UH Manoa, and what we’re prepared to do, in case of emergencies.

Thanks,
Gregg

Our response:

Gregg, thanks for your email. Here’s the issue as we see it:

Once the University is moved to issue an alert about a possible attack on the campus community, as you were yesterday, UH has an obligation to communicate what it knows as broadly, completely, efficiently and rapidly as possible. From the available evidence, UH didn’t do that.

We already know from published reports and anecdotally that the text message reached only some students and faculty. We don’t know what percentage did not receive it, but it’s not hard to imagine a majority was uninformed of the threat. Therefore, the text message essentially was a failure because too many members of the University community were unaware of the threat.

You allude in your email to other communications channels. UH apparently did not employ them yesterday. Newspaper accounts don’t mention them, and neither does your email. What was the information provided to UH campus security by Honolulu police that led University officials to conclude only a text message was needed but not loudspeakers, not announcements in classes and other buildings, not broadcasts by on-campus KTUH-FM and the commercial stations?

Unlike campus security officials, we don’t have insider information that allows them to nuance menacing threats. Maybe someone who’s overheard muttering to himself on a city bus only warrants a text message and not the other channels available to UH. Frankly, we’re not comfortable with security officials making those nuanced calls. That’s the kind of decision Virginia Tech officials made on their own, with disastrous results.

Here’s our suggestion for your emergency communications SOP:

Any threat to the security of the campus community warranting an alert to students and faculty will be disseminated by all available means – text messaging, emails, loudspeakers in buildings and in the campus’s exterior spaces, and broadcasts over KTUH and the commercial stations.

In other words, the alert level would go from ZERO to HIGH with no intermediate levels. We think this mindset can’t be faulted, whereas the SOP guiding yesterday’s ineffective alert already is under attack. Yesterday’s threat involved potential mass murder, and with the threat-maker’s whereabouts still unknown, UH issued an ineffective alert that may have eluded thousands of individuals on your campus. What possible reason did UH have to downplay the importance of that threat and therefore communicate with half measures to your community?

A final suggestion: Allow students and faculty to make their own decisions about how to react to a threat. If students and faculty members decide to leave or skip class based on a report such as yesterday’s, let them, and don’t penalize them for their absence.

If you’re going to trust personal communications devices such as cell phones with text messaging, take a giant leap and actually trust individual students and faculty members to make good decisions about their personal safety. They deserve that much.

Aloha,

Doug
(A postscript said the email exchange would be posted here at CHORE.)
•••••••••••••••••
We urge University officials to see yesterday's incident as a wake-up call and reason to revise their planning on how to keep the campus community informed about security threats. The current plan is demonstrably inadequate.

UH’s Email Alert Fails the Efficiency Test; Students Themselves Reveal TM’s Weakness

Yesterday’s security alert at the University of Hawaii raises additional questions about the wisdom of relying on text messaging as the primary way to communicate with students and faculty in an emergency.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Mid-Morning Update: CHORE wrote to Dr. Francisco Hernandez, UH Vice Chancellor for Students, and received this reply: "We are all concerned about the safety of our students, staff and faculty. I will bring your email to the attention of the officials on campus who have the responsibility of communicating with our campus during these types of situations."

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

As reported in the Honolulu Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin, a student overheard a bus passenger talking to himself about shooting 30 students. UH officials sent an email to students and faculty urging caution.

Two-Hour Information Gap

Except for the email, there apparently was no system in place to warn the campus community about the would-be shooter. As reported in the Star-Bulletin, some email recipients “were shocked” to learn about the potential threat because they hadn’t checked their email for two hours. Said one student:

"I just got out of class. Oh no! He's planning to shoot 30 students on campus? Oh my goodness. Not too many people actually check their email."

“Not too many people actually check their email.” What more need be said about relying on text messaging to spread emergency alerts?

Low-Tech Solutions Needed

Does UH have a campus loudspeaker capability? We know it has a radio station. Was the alert broadcast over KTUH? What about the mass telephony capability that’s been touted? There’s no mention in the newspaper stories of the alert using any of these media.

Society’s love affair with personal technology is as hot as ever, yet each new emergency raises questions about relying on text messaging as the primary emergency communications channel. Even UH’s spokesman cited its current limitations:

"It's not clear that (cell phone carriers) have the ability to send out 10,000 or 15,000 text messages at the same instance."

Students and faculty can’t tolerate a two-hour delay in being informed about their potential peril. “Not too many people actually check their email.” That’s by a 22-year-old from the heart of the text-messaging generation!

Yesterday’s events revealed UH’s seriously flawed capability to inform the campus about emergencies. Rather than obsessively gather everyone's cell phone number, University planners need to perfect additional channels -- including low-tech loudspeakers and radio -- to alert their community.

PS: We have it on good authority (our wife, a UH student) that ALL of her instructors announce cell phones must be turned off during class. If students are observed text messaging, they're told to turn off the phone. Case closed.

Advertiser Story Captures a Contrite Attitude Among Key Players in Communications Chain

Having been interviewed by the Honolulu Advertiser for its series on emergency preparedness, we waited for the paper’s delivery wondering how it would play the story. Would it focus on comments from the state’s high-gloss press conference on Saturday or dig deeper? The very first paragraph set our mind at ease:

“Persistent questions remain unanswered about the state’s plan to communicate with residents in the event of another devastating natural disaster such as the Oct. 15 quakes, say critics who complained bitterly about what seemed like an information vacuum during the 24-hour outage following the quakes.”

Paragraph 2 highlighted residents’ upset over State Civil Defense’s delay in allying fears about a possible tsunami. Paragraph 4 mentioned HECO’s two-hour delay in explaining why the power was out throughout Oahu, and the following paragraph questioned how information will be given to residents quickly.

Seeing It the Same Way

It’s clear others share at least some of CHORE’s perspective on the 10/15/06 communications failures. It’s also interesting that after their prolonged argumentative defensiveness in the face of criticism of their performance, some of the key players in the communications chain now seem contrite.

The general manager of all Clear Channel stations said the Clear Channel staff has been given new training. “We assessed what we did. We always try to improve. We’re going to work hard to do a better job,” he said.

That refreshing attitude is also a noticeable shift from his earlier somewhat self-satisfied descriptions of how flagship station KSSK performed during the emergency. One would hope it’s evidence of a new emergency mindset among all station personnel, including on-air personalities who seemed to be stuck in entertainment mode during the blackout. (Maybe this is the last time that we’ll recall KSSK’s decision to air the pre-recorded John Tesh show while half the island was still without power.)

HECO says it is assessing ways to prioritize restoring power to media outlets so information can flow quicker, and it has installed a direct communications link to emergency station KSSK. The utility, along with other emergency responders, now has a list of unpublished radio station telephone numbers so its personnel can get through during a crisis. (As noted here several times, that’s a lesson we learned at HECO during Hurricane Iwa 25 years ago!)

Even the State Adjutant General says in this story, “We’re going to get on the air right away,” a concession that State Civil Defense personnel were slow in providing information to the public.

Ah, Yes – the Public

The Advertiser story concludes with our continuing concern that the public has been shut out of the dialogue over how we’re to be served with emergency communications. “This (Comprehensive Communications Review) committee was a committee of insiders. The process still has a weak link until the public has a chance to ask questions.”

CHORE urges fellow citizens with similar concerns to call the Governor’s office to register your support for a public meeting on the emergency response plan.

What Exactly Has Been Updated in EAS Plan?

The first “key recommendation” in the CCRC report says the State’s Emergency Alert System Plan has been updated. One year after the 10/15/06 earthquakes and Oahu’s massive island-wide power outage, these words do not appear in the plan update that's available online: “power,” “outage,” “electricity” and “blackout.”

Just what was updated in this plan? That’s another question to be asked at a future public hearing on the CCRC’s report (see below).

Despite Report, Questions about the Human Element Remain Unexamined on Anniversary

The CCRC’s report released to the media two days ago remains unavailable on-line to the public as this is written in early morning on the one-year anniversary of the Big Island earthquakes and Oahu blackout.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Mid-Morning Update: The CCRC’s report finally was posted online this morning, two days after the committee posted the video of its Saturday press conference. Despite the report's shortcomings (see below,) all citizens concerned about their families’ communications lifeline during an emergency should read it.

First Impressions: Earthquake Sunday last year was a needed wake-up call. The long description of upgrades at the state’s broadcasting stations is impressive, and a number of other improvements undoubtedly enhance emergency communications.

Continuing impression: This report is flawed because the CCRC did not include the public in any organized and meaningful way. One example of where public input is needed is paragraph 8, page 3: “Cell phone text messages. This is where the state wants to go for the future. Working with cell phone companies.”

Why is the CCRC enthused about text messaging? How does it deal with skepticism that major hurricanes could wipe out cell phone networks and that a prolonged power outage would degrade the networks’ capabilities? What percentage of the state’s population uses text messaging? (That’s a statistic that’s undoubtedly floating around somewhere.) What age groups never, sometimes and always use TM? Why is text messaging needed to disseminate information in a state where 99.99% of the population has access to radio? How much money will be required to focus new energy on text messaging?

We don’t know any of the answers because the CCRC and State Civil Defense consistently have refused for the past year to open themselves up to public comment. Their unstated message easily can be interpreted as, “We know best. Go away.”

The Governor should consider this “final” CCRC report to be yet another draft until she concedes that public dialogue will only make the list of recommendations better.

The people know best, Governor. We always thought you believed that, too.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Continuing today's earlier post:
Today’s Honolulu Advertiser carries the second of three days of coverage on the emergency’s aftermath one year ago. Hawaiian Electric issues are the focus today, and tomorrow the paper says its coverage will focus on “State plans for better communications in event of a disaster.”

We’ve already learned about obvious technical communications fixes – alleged updates of the Emergency Alert System (although as we noted yesterday, the latest plan on-line doesn’t show much of an update); a new media center at State Civil Defense headquarters in Diamond Head, and dedicated phone lines to broadcast outlets.

Unexamined as yet in this anniversary’s performance assessment is the human element – how the men and women charged with decision making during a crisis performed and how the protocols they’re meant to follow have been improved.

Some of their decisions and assumptions were weak, such as assuming they could communicate easily using cell phone networks and assuming the public would panic if the word “tsunami” were uttered, even in a message saying no tsunami had been generated. If you’ve forgotten about that gaffe, check out the second commentary posted here at CHORE three days after the earthquakes.

Technical fixes are actually the easiest to make. Changing human behavior to respond more appropriately during a crisis is something much more difficult.

Tomorrow’s Advertiser will make good reading….and so would the CCRC report itself if the State gets around to posting it on-line today for citizens to evaluate on our own.

Emergency Communications Enhancements Should Be Briefed to the Public for Reaction

There’s still no on-line link today to the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee’s report that was submitted yesterday to the Governor. As we noted in last night’s post, the January 5th draft report was available immediately at the Governor’s website; why the final report isn’t similarly available for public scrutiny is a question an inquiring reporter may wish to ask.

We have to rely on media this morning for details, and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s list of “key recommendations for improving emergency communications in the state” apparently summarizes what’s in the report. CHORE was founded in the spirit of Citizens Helping Officials Respond to Emergencies, so let’s take a look at some of the suggestions on that list:

• Update Hawaii Emergency Alert System Plan – That’s definitely a good idea; as CHORE noted 10 days after the 10/15/06 earthquake and power outage, the EAS wasn’t activated until three hours after the emergency began. The Honolulu Advertiser reported that the City didn’t implement the EAS because of “a lack of training and state protocol.” How has the plan been updated in the past year to eliminate these problems? See if you can tell by clicking on the link to the Hawaii State EAS Plan in the left column of the Hawaii State Civil Defense website. The last change, dated 10/26/06, appears to have been an update to a list of phone numbers. Is that it? Are no other EAS changes merited, or have they been made but aren’t available to the public on the web? Those are questions a reporter could ask, and we hope at least one does.

• Utilize cell phone text messaging – Our emergency communications planners continue to advocate use of this new technology for use in hurricanes, tsunamis, floods and other major disasters. Maybe they know from extensive research that the cell phone network has been sufficiently “hardened” to survive category 4 and 5 hurricanes. Maybe the difficulty in keeping the network operating in an extended power outage has been overcome. Maybe they’re convinced a population with the oldest demographics in the nation is well suited for text messaging. Maybe they believe text messaging is an excellent way to keep the hearing impaired community informed during emergencies. Maybe their analysis of these and other issues related to text messaging is in the final report. We really don’t know what to think about text messaging because we haven’t seen the report. We do know this, however: The recommendation to promote text messaging is from a committee whose membership, as we noted in January, includes representatives from Cingular Wireless, Hawaiian Telcom, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless. We aren't surprised TM is on the list.

Next: A Public Hearing on the Plan?

The list continues with suggestions that appear well founded, such as establishing a media/joint information center at Diamond Head crater and installing dedicated phone lines to broadcast stations. Readers can judge the recommendations for themselves, and after you do, CHORE hopes you’ll call the Governor’s office and ask when this plan will be briefed to the public in an open meeting.

It should have happened long ago while the draft was still being assessed. Now that the report itself has been “hardened” in a final version, the committee should have no reticence in discussing it with the audience that emergency communication is supposed to serve.

CCRC Report Goes to Governor and News Media, But for the Rest of Us, We’ll Just Have to Wait

The Comprehensive Communications Review Committee has submitted its report and held its news conference, which you can view and read about it at the Governor’s website.

But you can’t read the report there. Unlike the CCRC’s draft report that was posted online in January, the final report isn’t available to the public as of late Saturday the 13th. A report that purportedly details how the public will be better served in future emergencies is not yet available to the public. You could laugh if it weren't so serious.

Of course, this isn’t unusual, since the public has never been party to the committee’s doings. As CHORE noted in a recent post, the committee was a group of insiders who among themselves and without public scrutiny have concluded what’s best for us.

Here’s the official word on the committee’s doings, as presented at Saturday’s press conference by co-chair Lenny Klompus, the Governor’s senior communications advisor and PR man:

“The Committee is very proud of the report that was put together and that you have right now. The public should feel great confidence in the communications delivered to them accurately and in a timely manner in an emergency based on what the committee was able to do over this last year.”

Just what did the committee do that should make us confident? We don’t know. We’re simply told we should be confident that the same people and agencies who failed so obviously on October 15, 2006 to provide timely emergency communications will do the job properly in the future.

That’s asking a lot. Unanswered at this moment are the questions CHORE posed two days ago about what we hope is in the CCRC’s final report.

Since citizens were not allowed into the committee’s workings and deliberations, it’s completely within our right to demand that this document be made available on the Internet immediately.

We should be confident the Governor will do the right thing...........right?

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.

Details Thin on What CCRC Thinks We Need

If you want to know what really transpired at yesterday’s meeting of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee (CCRC) – the details of who said what – waiting until mid-October will be a must. You won’t find details in today’s Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin stories.

Stories prepared for the Sunday, October 14th papers will have information on the final report of the CCRC, timed to be released nearly one year after Earthquake Sunday in October 2006.

As for today’s news, this is typical of the reporting:

Meanwhile, media outlets big and small talked about how they plan to get the messages out to the public, many adding or upgrading generators and installing simple land-line phones or satellite phones as an alternative to cell phones.

The sentence is taken from yet another story that gives the appearance of telling us what happened without actually do so. Exactly how do media outlets big and small intend to get the messages out to the public? Which outlets have upgraded their backup capability and which haven’t? (And are reporters writing these details, only to have them excised by an editor somewhere up the chain?)

Note to Editors:

The public needs these details in order to know whether we can trust the emergency responders to do the right thing. They weren’t prepared to keep us informed in October, and we have every reason to be skeptical about their preparations to date.

Finally, we need to ask whether the final report will provide details that will help citizens appreciate which media outlets have done their homework and which haven’t. CHORE doubts the report will include anything potentially embarrassing to anyone. The CCRC at its core is a club of insiders – government insiders, media insiders, communications industry insiders, civil defense insiders. A club of insiders isn’t likely to be tough on one another.

And because only members of the public might have risen to the level of asking tough questions, CHORE and like-thinking citizens are still on the outside and likely to stay there.

Power Outage Sets Stage for Wrap-up Meeting Of State’s Emergency Communications Body

The Comprehensive Communications Review Committee (CCRC) will hold its first meeting in months today, and to put at least some of us in the mood, the power went out last night in Kaimuki and Waialae-Kahala. It wasn’t a big outage – just a few seconds for many of us and less than an hour for the rest, but you had to laugh at the timing.

The CCRC was formed a couple days after the October 15th earthquakes that triggered a massive power outage on Oahu that lasted for up to 24 hours for some residents and half as long for tens of thousands of others.

CHORE lobbied from the start to open the CCRC to public input and attendance. That never happened, and it’s not happening today for reasons best understood by its leadership.

Coming to a Conclusion

Co-Chair Lenny Klompus called CHORE last week in response to our request to receive an invitation and an expanded agenda, which as we noted last month is without detail in its public version. We had every reason to expect our request would be honored, as CCRC Co-Chair Maj. Gen. Robert Lee urged us to request an invitation when he sat on the Honolulu Advertiser's "Hotseat" earlier this month.

Klompus denied the request and almost made the denial sound reasonable. This is merely a wrap-up meeting, he said. “We want to ask the members what have you done within your organization to be better prepared. What are you doing in the short term, and what have you done since October 15th?

“The process now is to come to a conclusion, to get final results of what people have done in the last year. Once this is concluded, we can say who did what. The next step will be to build the foundation for the next meeting.”

The 64-Megawatt Questions

Indeed, what has been done, and who’s done it? How many radio and television stations have added backup generation so they can remain on the air in a power blackout? Which ones are they? Which stations have not done so, and why?

How have stations adjusted their standard operating procedures for emergencies? Have they adopted the seemingly obvious fixes suggested here at CHORE and elsewhere, or are they still caught up in the self-congratulatory mode that was so evident in October?

Has text messaging become the fix du jour, as seemed to be the case when the CCRC issued its preliminary report in January? In a state with one of the oldest demographics in the nation, do our leaders truly expect text messaging to be useful to the majority of citizens? Or is text messaging just another communications medium destined to fail in a category 4 or 5 hurricane?

And what about State Civil Defense? What specifically has this agency done to alter its SOP for communicating in an emergency? The need certainly was obvious on October 15th, and Klompus mentioned a few improvements in our phone call.

It’s All About Serving the Public

Because the public needs to know all of these things, CHORE has to believe the CCRC at long last will recognize its obligation to the public and provide a detailed report on what transpires in today’s meeting.

We doubt, however, that it will be as comprehensive as the committee’s name would imply. We’ll shelve our skepticism if the CCRC actually tells us which broadcasting stations have not upgraded their capability.

Klompus alluded to future CCRC meetings. Will they open to the public at last, perhaps in the State Capitol Auditorium, where Hawaiian Electric Company held its public briefing on October 23rd?

Klompus hedged his answer, but CHORE took that as a “yes.”

Maj. Gen. Lee on the Advertiser's "Hotseat" Tells Citizens to Request Invitation to CCRC Meeting

Afternoon Update: A quick read of Honolulu Advertiser's Hotseat blog chat today involving Maj. Gen. Robert Lee, state adjutant general, reveals the virtual absence of anything to do with natural disasters and State Civil Defense's readiness in that regard. Maybe it's just not something the public focuses on unless there's a hurricane or tsunami bearing down on the islands.

Here's the question CHORE posted and General Lee's response

As co-chair of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee, which was created to assess the communications breakdown after the October 15th earthquakes and to recommend improvements, will you today reveal details of the agenda for the Committee's September 27th meeting? It currently reads only:

"Group discussion on status of final committee recommendations and
implementation status of those recommendations (by each organization)."

Details would help the public understand the scope of your upcoming meeting. One item worth covering: How many broadcast stations have added backup generators since October that will allow them to remain on the air during a power blackout? Which are they, and which stations have not added a backup capability? Also, is the public invited to the 9/27 meeting, and what is its location?

Thank you.

General Lee's response:

We are still working on the agenda for the Sep 27 meeting. Please contact the Governor's office to request an invite to the meeting.

And so we will, and maybe you will, too. If enough requests flow into the Governor's office, maybe they'll have to move the meeting to the Capitol Auditorium or another room large enough to accommodate a crowd and the media.

The issue is public safety, and this is the insider committee that's deciding how we'll all be served with emergency communications during our next emergency. We all have a stake in this.
-----
Morning Post:
If you're reading this before noon today (9/11), you mayR want to join the fun during the noon hour as State Adjutant General Robert Lee takes his place in the Honolulu Advertiser's Hotseat for an online chat. You can post your questions here.

CHORE already has posted a question concerning the agenda for the September 27th meeting of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee. The current agenda has no details, as we reported last month. We also asked whether the public will have access to the meeting, something that's been missing in all previous meetings of this Governor-appointed body.

As we reflect on the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it's worth also reflecting on the fact that the greatest threat to the security of Hawaii citizens comes from nature -- hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, lava flows and tsunamis. Let's hope today's Hotseat chat dwells on preparations to cope with those better than what we experienced on Earthquake Sunday 11 months ago.

1982 Video Recalls Broadcast Failures During Hurricane Iwa -- a Lesson Yet To Be Learned?

With the 25th anniversary of Hurricane Iwa’s pass through the islands just three months away, it’s useful to recall the lessons we should have learned during one of Hawaii’s biggest emergencies in its 48 years of statehood. One lesson was the need to strengthen the communications network.

We’ve just had the treat of watching a compilation of Honolulu television stations' newscasts that were dominated by Hurricane Iwa coverage on November 23 and 24, 1982. (Honolulu resident AJ McWhorter transferred the newscasts from their old formats -- e.g., Beta tapes -- to DVD; his hobby has become a business, as described in this Honolulu Star-Bulletin story. AJ wants to find old KGMB-TV tapes, including newscasts from the Bob Sevey era and the Crossfire public affairs show that aired “live” on Sunday afternoons in the mid-70s; if you can help him, write to AJ at ajm@hawaii.rr.com.)

Remembering the 1982 Breakdown

Long-time Hawaii residents will recall the communications debacle after Iwa smashed into Kauai and gave Oahu a glancing blow. The category 1 storm knocked off 95% of Oahu’s electric grid, and only one radio station – the designated emergency broadcaster – remained on the air with its backup generator.

Don Rockwell, KITV’s news director then, and anchor Tim Tindall sat in their studio late that night and talked about the storm damage, painfully aware that only a small fraction of the market was able to see their newscast during the power emergency. Rockwell described his trip to the Windward Side and back, noting the eerie feel of the deserted streets, and then he spoke with concern about how fragile the emergency communications system seemed to be:

Rockwell: One of the interesting things to me was that at one point the only communication between officialdom and the public was one radio station, and that was KGU.

Tindall: We had discussed that, and I wanted to get your thinking on that. We have a Civil Defense system and a Civil Defense network that has been set up in conjunction with the broadcast community for many years here, and it works well as long as the radio and television stations are on the air.

Rockwell: And there was only one on the air at the time, and I really want to compliment and congratulate KGU for doing a terrific job and for having the generator capacity to keep everything on the air, including their transmitter. And one wonders why more stations, and one wonders why the television stations – and I know it’s a very expensive project to keep the transmitter and the office building on the air – but you gotta wonder what would happen if something happened to KGU. Let’s say some saboteur came along and blew it up and we didn’t have them either, what would we then do? So that’s something I think we ought to keep our eyes on and ask a few questions about in the succeeding weeks and months as this becomes history.

Asking 1982’s Questions Now

Wherever he is today, Don Rockwell might be amazed how little had changed in Hawaii's broadcast industry in the 24 years between Hurricane Iwa and Earthquake Sunday, October 15, 2006. More than a dozen radio stations on Oahu and three out of four TV stations were unable to broadcast to their regular listeners and viewers because they lacked backup power.

One of Hurricane Iwa’s big lessons had either never been learned or was forgotten: If a station claims to broadcast in the public interest, it must be prepared to do so in a power blackout.

What’s the status today? We’re looking forward to the September 27th meeting of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee. The agenda for the meeting is no help in knowing what subjects will be covered, but CHORE believes it must include a detailed account of all Hawaii broadcast stations’ ability to remain on the air in a power emergency. If that’s something the stations cannot do, we have to question their commitment to the public interest and safety.

The CCRC needs to do the right thing and tell Hawaii citizens before the next emergency the status of our broadcast station lifeline. Tell us which stations have backup power and which don't. That at least will take the guesswork out of knowing where to turn for information in the next crisis.
---------------------

Click here to visit our sister blog for occasional posts on tsunami-related communication as events dictate. Tsunami Lessons was started one week after the December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

CCRC Sets Minimalist Agenda for 9/27 Meeting

Maybe you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but you often can judge a meeting by its agenda. Rule of thumb: The fewer details in the agenda, the less outside input is desired. That may be what's happening with the next meeting of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee.

You’ll recall that this committee was established after the October 15th earthquakes to review emergency communications preparedness and recommend improvements in how to keep our citizens safe and informed in emergencies. The issue, after all, is public safety.

Here’s the agenda for the September 27th meeting:

Welcome

Group discussion on status of final committee recommendations and implementation status of those recommendations (by each organization).

Wrap-up

Not much transparency, but at least the CCRC is consistent; transparency hasn’t been much of a consideration for the group, as CHORE has reported since its creation in October. The CCRC has not held public meetings and has had virtually no public representation on the body.

Since the September meeting is shaping up as the CCRC’s final piece of business, let’s see if Honolulu’s reporters can pull themselves away from the daily grind of covering hurricanes, fires and tsunamis – each one a potential crisis -- long enough to do some long-range coverage of the CCRC’s recommendations before they go into effect.

In that regard, one of the recommendations by the group, which had strong representation from the telecommunications industry, was to rely on text messaging in future emergencies. Here’s an MSNBC story headlined When Cell Phones Fail that reports on the breakdown of the cellular phone networks after the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis.

Citizens might well be skeptical about the CCRC’s recommendations regarding reliance on text messaging, in light of that incident and our own Earthquake Sunday experience. And even more important is the need for more transparency by a group that's planning for our future emergency communications needs.

At a minimum it could publish a detailed agenda.

NOTE: For a refresher on CHORE's objections to how State officials have treated the emergency communications issues since October, please visit our March 1st post here.

Could Quake Info Have Been Faster? Initial Assessment Suggests Slow Website Response

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center gets points for updating its website to be more user friendly. The graphics are attractive (if spotty at times), and the running log of outgoing messages is easy to find.

Nevertheless, yesterday’s quake was yet another opportunity to improve on existing procedures. The job’s never done, right? As the Oahu Civil Defense administrator said a couple days ago, “Every time we pull out the contingency plan, we find something and say, ‘Why didn’t we think of that last time?’ And we update the contingency plan.”

CHORE attempted to keep a real-time log of the PTWC’s quake-related messages following yesterday’s earthquake. We may have missed some emails from the PTWC, and we’ve gone back to its site see what was there and sign up for various alerts, just to be sure we’re on the list.

That said, our conclusion is that the Center’s website lagged in posting its outgoing bulletins and advisories by up to an hour or more. We can’t be positive, but that’s our conclusion.

Serving the Individual Consumer

One might argue that the PTWC was getting the word out efficiently to the Tsunami Warning Focal Points designated in each nation in and around the Pacific, as well as to civil defense agencies and key media in Hawaii.

Still, with our world rushing ever more rapidly toward electronic point-to-point communication, we have to hope NOAA and the PTWC are constantly working to make information accessible to the individual consumer without media intermediaries.

NOAA’s communications gurus might want to run an exercise on how they expect to transmit a tsunami warning to someone without access to radio and TV. In today’s environment, he or she might be as hard to find as Diogenes’s “honest man,” but it’s a worthwhile exercise to test the warning capability if broadcasters aren’t in the picture.

Testing Assumptions

Just ask Hawaii civil defense officials about assumptions, such as their assumed reliance on cell phones to communicate in an emergency. That one was proven faulty last October on Earthquake Sunday when Oahu’s cell networks crashed.

Email and the web have emerged as channels of choice for emergency information. It therefore is reasonable to want those channels to be as efficient and timely as they possibly can. If we’re correct in concluding that the PTWC website was an hour late in posting outgoing emails, that’s an obvious area for improvement.

Complacency Is the Enemy

PTWC officials already may be hard at work on fixing glitches and enhancing their capabilities, but to fix a glitch, you have to acknowledge that it exists. What makes CHORE nervous is that nearly every utterance by PTWC officials gives the impression that the Center handled everything with absolute perfection.

CHORE’s sister blog, Tsunami Lessons, was launched one week after the December 2004 Indonesian earthquake and tsunami precisely because the PTWC could have done things to save lives that day, but didn’t. (Go to our post on the 2nd anniversary of that event for a review of what life-saving opportunities were missed by the PTWC staff.) As the Oahu Civil Defense official suggested, there is no such thing as a “final contingency plan,” and we know with certainty that NOAA and the PTWC learned from their experiences in 2004 and have changed their procedures.

Let's hope they learn from yesterday, too.

7.9 Peru Quake Prompts PTWC Messages; Hawaii Put on Alert, then Gets the All-Clear

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued several emails and posted alerts on its website this afternoon. One email said the major earthquake just off Peru’s coast did indeed trigger a tsunami according to sea level gauges, and an “Expanded Regional Warning" was issued for Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and other nations up the Pacific coast.

The PTWC then issued a “Tsunami Advisory” specifically for Civil Defense agencies in Hawaii saying: AN EVALUATION OF THE PACIFIC WIDE TSUNAMI THREAT IS UNDERWAY AND THERE IS A POSSIBILITY THAT HAWAII COULD BE ELEVATED TO A WATCH OR WARNING STATUS. IF TSUNAMI WAVES IMPACT HAWAII THEIR ESTIMATED EARLIEST ARRIVAL TIME IS 0214 AM HST THU 16 AUG 2007 That later was canceled, as shown in this timeline.

Quake-Related Message Sequence:

1:40 p.m. HST – a shallow earthquake hits off the Peru coast.
1:53 p.m. HST -- PTWC issues Information Bulletin, says earthquake measured 7.5 magnitude and that quakes this size "sometimes generate local tsunamis...," advises authorities in region to take appropriate action.
1:54 p.m. HST – PTWC issues Information Statement, says: BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA A DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII. REPEAT. A DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII.
2:19 p.m. HST – PTWC issues its Expanded Regional Warning, upgrades quake to magnitude 7.9.
2:20 p.m. HST – PTWC issues its Tsunami Advisory to Hawaii agencies noting that a Watch or Warning could be declared.
3:26 p.m. HST -- PTWC issues an Expanding Regional Warning Supplement that says: SEA LEVEL READINGS INDICATE A TSUNAMI WAS GENERATED. WE HAVE OBSERVED A TSUNAMI SIGNAL ON THE DEEP OCEAN GAUGE OFF NORTHERN CHILE.
3:29 P.M. HST -- PTWC issues Tsunami Advisory Supplement to Hawaii agencies repeating the potential for a Watch or Warning here.
4:09 p.m. HST -- PTWC issues a somewhat confusing and incomplete Tsunami Warning and Watch Cancellation and says its bulletin APPLIES TO AREAS WITHIN AND BORDERING THE PACIFIC OCEAN AND ADJACENT SEAS...EXCEPT ALASKA...BRITISH COLUMBIA...WASHINGTON...OREGON AND CALIFORNIA. It specifically cancels the Warning and Watch for Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and the other nearby countries. The potential for a Watch or Warning in Hawaii is not mentioned in this Bulletin except obliquely in the "within and bordering the Pacific Ocean" phrase. Despite the cancellation, this Bulletin again notes that sea level readings indicate a tsunami was generated; however, there are no reports of a tsunami striking any shores at this time.
4:12 p.m. HST -- the PTWC issues its Final Tsunami Advisory canceling all warnings and watches and advisories on the potential tsunami. (However, this message is not posted on the PTWC website for at least an hour.)
4:15 p.m. HST -- the NOAA/NWS/West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center issues a "Final Tsunami Advisory" on its website noting that no tsunami watch or warning is in effect for the West Coast of North America. The Advisory says: "The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii has concluded its investigation of this event and is issuing a final message for areas outside California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska.
5:00 p.m. HST -- TV news reports the Hawaii "alert" has been cancelled.
5:15 to 5:30 p.m. HST -- the PTWC website catches up with earlier messages and posts three that are approximately one hour old, including the one referenced in the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center's 4:15 message, above.
As of 5:55 p.m. HST, an email from the PTWC has not been received noting the cancellation of the advisory for Hawaii that was issued at 4:12 p.m.

Snail Mail Email

CHORE has to wonder why the website and email communication links seem to have lagged as much as this timeline indicates. First indications are that these channels were not timely and need work. More to follow.

As Flossie Slips Away, Questions Remain on Broadcasters’ Ability to Function in a Crisis

Except for heightened readiness on the Big Island, the state didn’t have its emergency communications apparatus tested much by Hurricane Flossie. No major power outages were reported, and we therefore don’t know whether our broadcast industry has upgraded its capability to remain on the air during blackouts – a test many stations failed last October after the earthquakes.

The State’s Comprehensive Communications Review Committee, which was formed to examine communications failures on Earthquake Sunday and recommend improvements, has been silent for months. The logical conclusion is that it’s doing nothing, and citizens haven’t been told about emergency communications enhancements that will meet our needs during future crises.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s TheBuzz column today does some of the CCRC’s work for it by reporting on upgrades to Big Island radio stations. It’s good to see that New West Broadcasting Corp. now has backup generation installed for its three Hilo radio stations. Let’s hope TheBuzz reports on what Oahu stations have done, because it doesn’t look like we’ll find out from the state’s official communications review body.

Other post-Flossie observations:

• Don’t worry about “crying wolf.” A Honolulu Advertiser story today quotes a Kauai Civil Defense official, “There’s always the fear about crying ‘wolf,’” by issuing so many warnings that people stop responding to them…. Some people will ignore a freight train bearing down on them, but for heavens sake, don’t use them as your litmus test! If a weather or other incident suggests a warning should be sounded, don't play amateur psychologist. Just issue the warning! The majority of the population will thank you for it.

• Oahu Civil Defense has it right. The same story ends with a quote from Oahu’s CD administrator that reveals a mindset that might well be emulated by State Civil Defense, which often gives off the vibe that it can do no wrong. Every storm is a training opportunity, the administrator says. “It’s improving the way we plan. Every time we pull out the contingency plan, we find something and say, ‘Why didn’t we think of that last time?’ And we update the contingency plan.”

Exactly right.

Advice to Emergency Communicators: Please Concentrate Only on What We Need to Know

We start by reiterating the purpose of this blog; go here for our first post, which includes our Mission Statement. In sum: we’re here to help.

That said, we urge State Civil Defense officials to confine their public statements in the few seconds afforded to them by the media as Hurricane Flossie approaches to what is truly important for citizens to know – information that will help us in the coming emergency.

We do not need briefings on internal logistical moves. What are we talking about? Here’s what the State’s top Civil Defense official said this evening on KGMB-TV’s 6 o’clock news:

“We have a fairly large full-time force of both the Army and Air National Guard that’s on duty now, and we’re just waiting for additional needs that we can activate very quickly. Our helicopters are on alert to fly to the Big Island, and the rest of the Air National Guard assets if need be.”

Just Give Us the “Need to Know”

Military personnel would call this “nice to know” information, but it’s certainly not “need to know.” As this official and anyone in a position to be interviewed regularly should know, the media will use what you emphasize in your remarks – and your remarks should emphasize what’s important. We simply do not need to know what Air Guard assets are available to fly to the Big Island.

What information might the citizenry want to know? Let’s start with the status of all those radio stations that lost power on October 15th. We need to know whether those stations have improved their ability to stay on the air and which stations have invested in improvements. We might also want to know which stations have done little or nothing to improve their resiliency in a power emergency.

We might want to know how often and when civil defense officials will issue updates over those stations. And we should know how many of the nearly 150 "gap areas" in the emergency siren warning system have been filled in the past several months and which communities remain unprotected by a warning system.

Exactly what's been done to improve emergency communications to the citizenry, General?

Measuring Up to the Test

Hurricane Flossie is the first real test of Hawaii’s emergency communications capabilities since Earthquake Sunday. Hawaii’s citizens deserve highly professional emergency communications. CHORE urges officials to confine your logistical information to your internal briefings and give us only what we need to know to be prepared for this hurricane.

Central Pacific Hurricane Center Corrects the Narrative of Hurricane’s Path to Match its Map

As noted in the Sunday Morning Update to yesterday’s post, immediately below, the Central Pacific Hurricane Center was in the embarrassing and baffling position of having contradictory information about Hurricane Flossie on its website early today.

Advisory #16 had Flossie moving west while the map on the Flossie information page showed the storm moving much further north than due west. This west-northwesterly path on the map shows nearly the entire state within the hurricane’s “Potential Day 1-3 Track Area.”

Advisory #17 issued at 11 a.m. HST today eliminates the discrepancy: FLOSSIE IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 14 MPH AND THIS MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE OVER THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

CHORE wonders why Advisory #16 was so obviously out of synch with the map on the CPHC’s Flossie page. Surely the Center has a zero tolerance policy about publishing anomalous information like this.

Stay alert, citizens. Ours is not a zero-defect world.

With Flossie Bearing Down on the Islands, It’s Time to Check Your Supply of Radio Batteries

SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE: Something doesn't seem right about the Central Pacific Hurricane Center's information pages on Hurricane Flossie. Bulletin #16, the latest as of this writing, says: FLOSSIE IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST NEAR 12 MPH AND THIS MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS. Yet the map on the Center's Flossie page shows a predicted path that is clearly well north of due west, suggesting a much closer pass by the state than would a path "toward the west." Might we expect more precision than this when a "dangerous" hurricane approaches Hawaii?

Maybe this category 4 hurricane won’t strike the islands after all, but in the words of a State Civil Defense spokesman, “So what?” Here’s his entire quote from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin story:

"If this thing fizzles out, so what? Everybody should still be prepared."

There’s nothing like an off-the-cuff remark by a State Civil Defense official to impart confidence among the citizenry, is there?

In the absence of any substantive advice from State Civil Defense in this story, here’s CHORE’s recommendations regarding emergency communications:

Go out and buy batteries for your portable radio. Don’t own one? Buy a battery-powered radio today – along with extra batteries. If the winds pick up dramatically and/or the power fails, immediately turn on your radio and listen for situation updates.

(Perhaps after seeing how meager his earlier remarks seemed in print, this same official expanded his comments, as reported in Sunday's Star-Bulletin near the bottom of the story.)

Documenting the Performance

If a radio station goes off the air, make a note of the time and date for your future complaint to the Federal Communications Commission, then tune to another station. Keep doing that until you find a station that stays on the air and gives frequent “live” updates.

If a station cuts to pre-recorded programming in the middle of a power blackout or storm incident, make a note of that, too – also for that future complaint to the FCC. (We really can’t accept the premier emergency broadcast station going to a canned show again as it did on October 15th, can we?)

Also note when you first hear statements by an official spokesman for the civil defense agencies and the electric company on the radio. It’s only natural to expect earlier statements and better performances from them than what we experienced on Earthquake Sunday last October. The notes you keep will help reconstruct the sequence of events so those performances can be evaluated. CHORE would like to know what you find, so add your comments to our most recent blog post when the time comes.

Remember, this site is all about Citizens Helping Officials Respond to Emergencies. You can do that by paying close attention to how they do with Flossie or whenever the next emergency occurs.

Once a Hurricane, Tropical Depression Cosme Provides Incentive to Stock Up on Batteries

CHORE has really let it slide this summer. We’re average only one post a month during hurricane season, a tipoff we’ve pretty much moved on and beyond the communications failures during and after Earthquake Sunday. Trouble is, so has everyone else, and there’s been virtually zero follow-up by the news media in recent months on how or whether October’s communications deficiencies have been corrected.

We may not have the answers to all the questions that have been posted here at CHORE until the next emergency, which is not a comforting feeling. If all the radio and TV stations stay on the air during the next major power outage, we’ll know the stations’ staffs have done a responsible job in fixing their problems. If they go to dead air, we’ll be the losers then and there.

COSME Comes Calling

Tropical Depression Cosme, a one-day hurricane earlier this week, has winds estimated at 30 knots this afternoon that could strengthen to minimal tropical storm intensity as it approaches the Hawaiian Islands. We need the rain.

Cosme is also delivering a reminder that storms are inevitable in Hawaii and require forethought to survive – from individual households to broadcasters and all the way up the emergency chain of command.

Cosme looks to be a minor inconvenience at worst for the islands. We’ll have to wait and see about the other Eastern Pacific storms that may come our way this year, starting with Delila, Erick, Gil, Henriette, Ivo, Juliette, Kiko………..

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.

Good Practice, Good News for Storm Season

Travel has reduced our posting frequency lately, and we're still checking in from a distance. We'll break the string of non-posts today by linking to the hurricane preparedness stories in the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin and their good advice to get ready for the season.

The prediction of 72 dead from a category 4 storm striking Oahu is a sober reminder of the serious hurt hurricanes can inflict on our islands. That kind of storm ferocity also calls into question some of the communications channels being proposed to aid citizens during such a disaster. E.G., let's just assume that cell phone towers will be blown away, as will text messaging as a way to communicate emergency information.

Now would be a good time for the Governor's Comprehensive Communications Review Committee to publish an update on the communications enhancements it presumablly has overseen during the past seven months since the committee was formed. A good start would be to disclose how many radio stations have added backup generation since Earthquake Sunday.

Oahu’s Primary Crisis Response Station Is Failing To Manage Its Own Self-Made Emergency

KSSK’s management is giving us a classic example of how not to react when the going gets tough. By not returning phone calls – which seems to be the standard operating procedure down at Clear Channel Communications – management is making things worse.

But the papers are spelling everybody’s name correctly, so it’s all good publicity, right? Ratings undoubtedly are higher than they were before Larry Price’s “blue-eye” comment, and as we’ve already heard from management, ratings are what’s important.

But speaking of ratings, the crown appears to have slipped slightly. The Star-Bulletin reports Cox Radio’s KRTR has moved ahead of KSSK in a “key demographic” group, the 25-to-54-year-old audience.

A Matter of Trust

KSSK is the station we’re supposed to turn to during our next island-wide crisis, when communication to the public becomes critical. Trouble is, the public is now killing the messengers for their lack of professionalism.

What are we to make of that?

KSSK’s Price Steps in It – Suggesting That ‘Infallibility’ Isn’t One of the Station’s Assets

The only reason to wade into the KSSK/Larry Price flap is to point out the obvious: Nobody and no organization is beyond reproach. Larry Price’s unfortunate dialogue with Senator Hooser that prompted a pseudo-apology was proof once again that the only way off a pedestal is down. (Read the Price-Hooser conversation here.)

[5/7 Update: The Advertiser's "Breaking News" section today has one of the strangest apologies you'll hear or read. What Larry Price gives as an apology to Senator Hooser, sidekick Michael Perry takes away with his "You don't have to apologize" rant. There's not much room up there on that pedestal, so maybe Perry's just too close to "get it" -- which is what Hooser seems to think based on his afternoon response to KSSK's weird apology.]

KSSK’s personalities have been up there so long that it’s hard to think of them as mortal – subject to the same flaws that afflict us all. But they’re only human, and this latest evidence of their mortality may make our earlier criticism of their performance in October’s Earthquake Sunday emergency more believable.

CHORE takes no pleasure in watching the mighty tumble. We only hope this experience also makes the radio station humble and convinces KSSK’s management that ratings aren’t necessarily the measure of their performance.

We all will rely on KSSK to be there in our next crisis as one of the primary emergency communications stations. All we want is clear-headed thinking and professionalism from KSSK’s on-air personalities, who presumably will be rolled out as the “face” of our next emergency response.

A taste of humble pie may be what it takes to improve KSSK's performance.

Half-Measures Are Inadequate in Emergency; YouTube & My Space Should Be Mandatory

The University of Hawaii tested its new mass telephoning system yesterday, and administrators are assessing how this and other channels can alert the mass campus audience in an emergency.

Some say text messaging would be the best way to reach students in an emergency – evidence of an ardent love affair with technology that seems as hot as ever.

If technology is the answer, why stop with text messaging? Why not use every conceivable high-tech medium to reach the young adult audience?

Let’s make YouTube and My Space mandatory. Everyone should be required to check for updates on YouTube and My Space at least once every 30 minutes just in case there’s an emergency. Website traffic can be monitored, and violators of this public-spirited policy can expect to be fired or expelled.

Not such a good idea? Here’s another one: Use radio.

Why is radio missing from the discussion? Are UH administrators not mentioning this virtually ubiquitous channel to reporters? Are officials talking about radio but reporters aren’t listening?

CHORE made this point a couple weeks ago. Neither the Advertiser story then nor today’s story mentioned KTUH, the on-campus station that presumably should be a key communications link during a campus emergency.

Old, Old, Old School

Radio enthralled the great-grandparents of students in school today. It’s not just old school; it’s old, old, old school – so old that maybe even administrators don’t give it a second thought.

But if a multi-channel approach is the objective, they simply can’t ignore their own on-campus radio station. Old-school radio is still around because it still works for enough people. Computers and cell phone technology are great; we wouldn’t want to be without them. But we especially wouldn’t want to be without radio in an emergency.

That’s a lesson the new school has let to learn, but it shouldn't have to wait. The high-tech solutions being evaulated presumably will take months or longer to implement. I just checked, and KTUH is up and operating right now at 90.3 FM.

If UH administrators intend to interrupt programming in an emergency, the UH community needs to know that now!

Veteran Big Island Reporter Rips State Civil Defense Chief for “Failure To Communicate”

While we await updates on the University of Hawaii’s effort to construct a workable emergency communications program, we’ll turn to an unexpected source of inspiration.

Hawaii residents with even a modicum of public affairs awareness will recognize Hugh Clark as the long-time (as in, decades-long) Honolulu Advertiser reporter/editor/bureau chief on the Big Island. During his long tenure as the Advertiser’s “man on Hawaii,” Hugh covered every imaginable natural and man-made disaster – hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, volcanic eruptions and more.

You name it, Hugh Clark was there – which is why his letter to State Civil Defense chief Major General Robert Lee has so much weight. Hugh was moved to write his letter after reading General Lee’s commentary in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that attacked CHORE for questioning State Civil Defense’s response to the October 15th earthquakes.

Here’s Hugh’s letter to General Lee, printed with his permission and cleaned up only for the occasional typo:

Maj. Gen. Robert G.F. Lee
Director, State Civil Defense
3429 Diamond Head
Honolulu, HI 96815

Dear Sir:

I was dismayed when I read your attack on Doug Carlson in the Star-Bulletin in March. My reply was delayed by my desire to think through an appropriate response.

Several pieces since then, including Gordon Pang’s (story) about 147 sirens MIA, convinced me to act, since it is clear you have done little or nothing after your disastrous response to the October double earthquake event.

I speak from 40 years of residence on the Big Island where, as a former editor and reporter, I participated in Civil Defense drills as a guest and covered events from major earthquakes to such wide-ranging events as disastrous lava flows and snow-blinded tourists on Mauna Kea. I also was involved in several would-be hurricane events that alarm Oahbu residents far more than seasoned Big Islanders.

That an alleged 147 tusnami sirens are needed and not yet installed six months after the Kiholo quakes speaks volumes about your inaction. Sirens are the key to tsunami alerts, more so than on-air radio stations.

That you have not set up to this point radio backup electric systems also is unpardonable.

Let me add some other observations. I was alert when these events occurred nearly simultaneously and my Big Island radio stations were dead. I turned on my television service and listened stupefied by Fox News that had some moron who said he was puzzled by a Hawaii earthquake because there are no fault zones here.

Later, as electric service here was restored, (Mayor) Harry Kim came on with his reassuring voice and gave us the first sense of what was happening. He continued to do that while you folks in Honolulu failed miserably, as Doug obviously has observed.

You say you “don’t understand the purpose of the negative.” A more real question is, do you understand your responsibility and your failures since these earthquakes?

You might have the spit and polish of a military officer, but your Civil Defense performance is plainly lacking.

I recommend you sign up Doug as an adviser, rather than trying to kill the messenger, and get yourself in gear to fix the most obvious problems – lack of radio signals because there is no back-up generation ,and get the damn sirens up and running.

Until then, you are the one “failing to communicate.”

Yours truly,
Hugh Clark
Hilo, HI

We've posted this letter simply to reflect the fact that CHORE was not alone in our criticism of State Civil Defense's commuications efforts during its big test in October. The agency's aggressive response to our criticism seemed out of line at the time and still does.

We’re glad Hugh Clark -- an experienced and respected observer of current events -- sees it that way, too.

UH Official Agrees KTUH May Be Useful Link to Campus Community During Emergencies

CHORE has talked with Dr. Francisco Hernandez, vice chancellor for students at UH-Manoa, who was quoted in the Honolulu Advertiser story this week on campus emergency communications planning.

KTUH’s possible role as an information channel during a campus crisis wasn’t mentioned in that story or any other, as we noted on Wednesday.

We referred Hernandez to Wednesday’s post and our hope that “the ultimate PA system” – KTUH – will be integrated in the UH emergency communications plan. He said the point was well taken and that he’d begin discussions with KTUH’s management. We look forward to updated media stories and future discussions with Dr. Hernandez on his progress.

That’s the kind of positive response we love to see. It certainly feels better than being attacked by an agency you’re trying to help! For a comparison, check out our March 1st post: General Lee Launches Counter-Offensive at CHORE; We Respond with Defense-in-Depth

Maybe UH will be open to meeting with citizens -- especially students -- and allowing them to participate in discussions on how the institution can best serve them during emergencies. The failure of the Governor-appointed Comprehensive Communications Review Committee to meet with the public during its sessions last year was a major blunder, from our perspective, as we noted from the get-go.

It seems reasonable to anticipate greater openness from the University -- an institution dedicated to open discussion and debate -- than from government agencies adept at obfuscation.

UH Officials, Students May Not Be on Same Page about Campus’s Emergency Readiness; KTUH Not Yet Mentioned as Part of Communications Plan

University of Hawaii officials say they’re confident they can quickly alert the student body during an on-campus emergency, according to a Honolulu Advertiser story today.

CHORE hopes they’re right, but as we cautioned yesterday, over-confidence can be a dangerous thing. The Advertiser asked some UH students what they think about their campus’s readiness. Here are two responses:

"I don't know that we would be able to get the word out," said fine arts senior Amy Craig, a resident adviser at an on-campus dorm. "I'm concerned about the lack of access to students after an emergency. There is no comprehensive plan in place."

"The school is definitely not prepared," said Michele Messina, a junior in psychology and dorm resident. "There's no procedure. We can't lock down."

Two students don’t represent an entire student body, but if any students feel this way, UH officials have reason to wonder about the gap between their own confident attitude and what these – and maybe many other – students believe.

Dialing for Students

The story ticks off some of the ways officials say they would communicate with students – email, a public announcement system in Campus Center and a telephone tree “which starts at top officials and drops down to professors or staff members, who are supposed to notify students.”

The reporter didn’t fully describe the process, but if this “tree” means senior officials will call professors and staff who then will notify students, you have to wonder how quickly an emergency message will reach students – and what the message will sound like when it finally gets there.

Did you play the Telephone Game as a kid? Did the message at the end of the circle ever resemble the message at the start? Surely there’s more to the system than what traditionally passes for a “telephone tree” – a small number of people calling other people who call others until it spreads down the branches in Christmas tree-like fashion.

The first obvious objection is the time involved to move the message down a tree, but there are many more whenever you put people in the middle of a communications chain. Here’s a principle UH officials might well consider: The fewer the components in a communications chain, the faster a message will travel with fewer changes.

What About KTUH?

We’ve had two days of reporting by Honolulu’s two dailies on the university’s emergency alert procedures, but so far, we’ve seen no mention of how officials would use KTUH, the on-campus radio station.

Is that just an oversight, or have officials not even written KTUH into their emergency communications plan? They talk about email and telephone trees and public address systems but presumably have told reporters nothing about how they’d use the ultimate PA system right there on campus – a radio station!

As CHORE noted yesterday, multiple channels are necessary to communicate with a community of people scattered throughout a campus doing different things at any given time. Wiring all major buildings for public address announcements makes sense; emailing makes sense; mass telephone calling makes sense; a wailing siren makes sense; roving security officers make sense, and so does using the broadcast media – both on campus and off. Radio's message stream can be nearly continuous.

H is for Help

CHORE was started as a way to offer helpful comment and stimulate discussion on emergency communications within our community. That’s what we and others are doing when we write our blogs and comment on what others have written.

We're offering help when we encourage officials to abandon any thought of being confident they have everything handled. Based on what UH officials are telling reporters about Manoa's communications plans, it doesn’t look that way to some of us.

VT Tragedy Spurs Response Review Here; Multiple Channel Approach Will Improve Alert

Education officials throughout the country are analyzing their emergency response procedures in the aftermath of yesterday’s mass slaughter at Virginia Tech. Both the Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin take on the issue in stories today.

In the Star-Bulletin story headlined "UH touts e-mail, phone and PA warnings", a University of Hawaii spokesman describes the institution’s current thinking:

During an emergency, UH administrators can notify faculty, staff and students on campus through email, telephone and even through the broadcast news media (the spokesman said). If the chancellor decides there is a need to notify people on campus that there is still a danger, the most immediate means of alerting them would be through e-mail.

Without giving a source, the Advertiser story notes the same mindset:

UH-Manoa does not have a public address system, and students and staff would be notified of a crisis by e-mail and telephone calls.

CHORE’s mission since its inception after the October earthquakes (our first post was six months ago today) has been to improve emergency communications by stimulating discussion here at this blog, and we’ll continue doing so now.

Too Reliant on Email?

As the Bulletin’s story notes, the email channel works for people sitting in front of a computer, but what percentage of a campus’s population is doing that at any given moment? We have to think it’s small.

Email certainly is one channel to use, but don’t stop there. How do UH officials propose to alert students in class, walking through campus, studying in Hamilton Library or eating lunch in Paradise Palms? Email won’t reach anyone who isn't on-line, and neither will cell phone text messaging if phones are turned off (many UH professors and instructors tell their students to turn off their cell phones at the start of each class).

The Advertiser story notes the absence of a loudspeaker system under centralized control for instant communication throughout campus buildings and grounds. The Star-Bulletin mentions reliance on mobile loudspeakers, which suggests spotty coverage impeded by the “human factor”; the Campus Center and vicinity might be covered, but announcements may not reach other areas:

“Campus security officers can spread out on campus and make announcements using mobile loudspeakers. School officials can also tap into the internal public address sound system in the Campus Center. The Campus Center also has speakers that can be heard in the surrounding area.”

What About Radio?

CHORE continues to think radio is being short-changed as the most ubiquitous communications channel going. When properly managed and rehearsed, radio station staffs should be able to respond instantaneously to an urgent need and blanket the entire island with an emergency broadcast.

Management and rehearsal is the key, and we’d like to know how recently any radio station has staged an emergency response drill in concert with an outside organization, such as the University. The Earthquake Sunday experience with radio wasn’t reassuring.

And as the Honolulu Community Media Council has suggested, the consolidation of the broadcast industry has resulted in personnel cutbacks at stations owned by the conglomerates. Station automation introduces new challenges to a rapid response.

Getting the Word Out

The sub-head in the Bulletin's story today is "The university says it can get the word out if gunfire erupts at the Manoa campus". Based on today's media coverage, we're not so sure about that and hope University officials aren't exposing an overly confident attitude. Additional planning and implementation of rapid response procedures can only help.

Hawaii Citizens, You’ve Made a Difference; New Emergency Protocols Respond to Complaints

Maybe the communications problems on Earthquake Sunday were so obvious even a caveman could solve them, but we think grassroots activism had something to do with the changes reported in today’s Honolulu Advertiser (“Alert will come, tsunami or not”).

The paper’s story on emergency communications and preparedness includes State Civil Defense’s repudiation of its own mindset in October that telling the public no tsunami had been generated could have produced panic and confusion.

That’s exactly what State Civil Defense thought would happen, as reported in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on October 18th. CHORE took issue with that assertion the same day (“Common Sense Says Our People Won’t Panic”).

Today’s Advertiser story goes right down the list of improvements we citizens have advocated – television “crawls” and radio station announcements after large quakes when no tsunami has been generated; quicker response using the Emergency Alert System; more emergency generators to keep broadcasters on the air; maintenance of unpublished phone numbers at the stations for use only by emergency communicators, and emphasis on radio as the most ubiquitous information source.

More Work Remains

Not mentioned in the story is a communication channel we’ve been skeptical about – text messaging on cell phones. Maybe that’s still to come, but we still have to question whether any cell towers will survive a category 4 hurricane.

Also not mentioned is whether emergency broadcasters have adjusted their own playbooks on how to deal with emergencies. As noted here at CHORE early and often, emergencies are not “entertainment” and therefore require different broadcasting standards.

So although this is a good start, the job’s far from over. As we told the Advertiser, now we wait to see if these adjustments will work in the next emergency. And we still think officials in charge of emergency communications to the public should meet with the public to discuss these measures and hear what average citizens think about them.

6,335 Days and Counting

One clarification about the Advertiser story: Although I’m identified near the end as “Hawaiian Electric Co. spokesman” (to the dismay of HECO officials, no doubt), that description hasn’t applied since December 1989. “Former spokesman” would have been accurate (and now is in the story's on-line version).

HECO Says No More Quake-Caused Outages; Communication Failures Still Not Discussed

Today’s Honolulu Advertiser front-pages Hawaiian Electric’s bold assurance that earthquake-caused massive power outages are a thing of the past (“Quake outage won’t recur, HECO says”).

The story’s sidebar lists three technical problems (Problem 1, Problem 2, etc.) that address the equipment and procedural failures that produced the prolonged blackout on October 15th.

But Problem 4 is missing from the list – the company’s failure to communicate effectively with the public until well into the outage. Unless we’ve missed it, HECO has yet to explain what it has done to fix Problem 4, which has been CHORE's focus all along.

A host of communications failures that day – not just by HECO but at State Civil Defense and many broadcast outlets – made Earthquake Sunday worse for most people. Frustration can turn to anger when the public is left in information limbo.

HECO’s reluctance to discuss these matters is puzzling. Company officials brushed off questions about the communications problems when asked about them at the October 23rd open meeting at the State Capitol, and they don't seem to have talked about them in public since.

A HECO spokeswoman is quoted in today's story: “In wake of the outage, we’ve had many lessons learned and there have been many meetings at all levels of the company, from the executive level down to the detailed operations level.”

If any of those meetings covered public communications issues, we’ve yet to hear much if anything about them. It can’t hurt Hawaiian Electric to be as open about Problem 4 and it seems willing (or required) to be with Problems 1 through 3.

Problem 4 made 1-3 worse.

Rename the PTWC To Be Accurate; Call It the ‘United States Tsunami Warning Center’

(This is a "two-blog" post; it’s also found today at our sister blog, Tsunami Lessons.)

Yet another tsunami has killed Pacific islanders, but at least America was well informed about the status of the threat. “The system worked,” said a Hawaii Civil Defense official in praise of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center’s network of buoys and seismographs.

Can it truly be said “the system worked” when people die? Are we so concerned about our own safety that we applaud a system that was incapable of warning unsuspecting islanders that they were in imminent danger of losing their lives?

Wanted: A Vision

How appropriate to quote Solomon in Proverbs as we look for lessons in the Solomon Islands tsunami:

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

What might the vision be for a tsunami warning network that actually saves lives? The current version demonstrably doesn’t do that. More than 230,000 people died in the December 2004 tsunami; at least 30 died in the Solomons, and the toll is rising.

Clearly, the way the network is put together doesn’t work if “work” is defined as being a life-saver. So let’s give the vision thing a try.

Start with a goal: An effective tsunami warning network will be structured and operated in such a way that lives will not be lost – even in a locally generated tsunami.

Apply that goal to all high-threat islands, countries and territories in the Pacific where we know with certainty killer tsunamis are generated. Analyze the existing warning capabilities – sirens, radio stations, networks. Test their reaction time.

Does the System Work?

Analyze the test results. What worked and what didn’t? Is there any possible way the existing system can warn people that a locally generated tsunami may kill them?

If not, change the system!

Argue, debate and harangue local authorities until they agree to relinquish their control of the system; holding on isn’t worth the potential loss of their citizens’ lives.

Work with the United Nations. Establish funding for system enhancements. Install a fast-alert capability that sounds sirens and scrambles radio station personnel within minutes when a threat is recognized. Set a threshold that seems reasonable – perhaps a magnitude 7.5 quake in a region that historically experiences tsunamis.

Whatever you do, NOAA, do something! The current system is not working for Pacific Islanders – so don’t call it a Pacific Tsunami Warning system.

Be honest and rename the center in Hawaii to reflect its true function. Call it the United States Tsunami Warning Center. That’s what it does well – alerts and warns the states and territories of the United States.

But don’t pretend to be a Pacific-wide life-saving tsunami warning system. Your current vision isn’t big or bold enough.

Article Raps Public for its Poor Tsunami Awareness, but Officials' Reaction Is Critical

Today’s second part of the Star-Bulletin’s series on tsunami and emergency preparation lays a lot of blame on the public for its apparent collective ignorance on what to do during a major earthquake and tsunami event.

And that’s undoubtedly true. People are people, and changing public perceptions is going to take time. Not everyone will leave the water when the warning sirens begin to wail.

What CHORE wants to keep in focus is the requirement for the paid professionals to react flawlessly during the next crisis – unlike their response on October 15th.

A tsunami expert opines that “thousands would have been killed if the Oct. 15 Big Island earthquakes had triggered a tsunami, because people in low-lying areas who felt the ground shake did not move to higher ground.”

Failures All Around

The hypothetical death toll likely would have been boosted by the failure of several key links in the communications chain on Earthquake Sunday due to the power blackout, the lack of emergency generators at radio and TV stations, communicators’ unwise reliance on cell phone networks that failed, the lack of foresight in compiling lists of unpublished emergency-only numbers at broadcast outlets, etc.

“All the money being spent to improve the tsunami warning system is a waste if people respond as they did during the earthquakes,” the expert said.

Replace “people” with “officials” in that sentence and the same will be true.

PTWC Touts Tech as ‘Tsunami Month’ Begins; Emergency Siren ‘Gap Areas’ Get Second Look

[Today’s post at Tsunami Lessons, our companion blog, is duplicated here at CHORE this morning.]
* * * * *
"One goal of the improved instruments is to avoid having too many warnings, which erodes confidence in the system, McCreery said. 'The gap is really trying to keep the public prepared to do the right thing when the situation occurs.'"

That paragraph is the final one in a Honolulu Star-Bulletin story today on new instruments installed at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The irony should be obvious to anyone familiar with the complete absence of a useful warning after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. (New visitors to Tsunami Lessons might want to start reading on this subject at our first post on January 2, 2005, "No Tsunami Warning -- Why?")

Tomorrow's second part of this two-part series is titled "Getting the public to respond to tsunamis" -- potentially another irony-laden angle in light of the 2004 tsunami warning failure.

Our observations are long overdue here on improvements made in NOAA's standard operating procedures to disseminate tsunami warnings using the news media -- the #1 subject we've flogged for the past two years. Enough has been written about these improvements in the past few months to conclude that NOAA has indeed restructured its early-warning procedures to engage the news media earlier than ever.

For now, we'll wait for more news during Tsunami Awareness Month to see how the PTWC actually will use its new technology to accomplish its mission -- which is to warn.
* * * * *
5-Month “Gap” in Gap Reporting

The Honolulu Advertiser today carries a page 1 story that essentially repeats revelations made by the Star-Bulletin on October 29th – that nearly 150 “gap areas” around the islands aren’t covered by the emergency siren network.

Back then, officials wouldn’t disclose which communities are in the gaps, but that lapse in judgment was swept away by the Bulletin’s public records request, as noted in CHORE’s January 14th post.

Conclusion: Tsunami Awareness Month has begun with a media blitz that focuses attention on needed improvements in Hawaii’s emergency communications capabilities. And that’s no joke.

KITV Wins Honor for Earthquake Coverage

KITV has won an Edward R. Murrow Award in the spot news category for its breaking news coverage of the October 15th earthquakes, according to "The Buzz" column in today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

The station was essentially the only TV outlet to perform well on Earthquake Sunday thanks to an emergency generator that provided power during the massive island-wide outage.

The story says there were no Hawaii radio winners -- which should tell you something about radio's performance that day. CHORE began writing about radio's deficiencies one week after the quakes.

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.

Attendance at Legislative Briefings Is State CD’s Gauge of Public’s Concern over Communications

We’ve already examined Maj. Gen. Robert Lee’s view (here and here) that there were no communications failures after the October 15th earthquakes. The State’s Adjutant General said in a Honolulu Star-Bulletin commentary that what really happened amounted to an “information delay,” not a failure.

CHORE today turns to State Civil Defense’s second in command to examine why he apparently believes the average citizen isn’t all that concerned about emergency communications.

Vice Director Ed Teixeira was a guest on KIPO’s “Town Square” program on February 22 and said the following while answering a question about the lack of public involvement in assessing how to improve emergency communications:

Teixeira: At the beginning of the year, the Legislature had some information briefings, and there was one particular session left open to public comment, and you know, surprisingly, there were maybe about a dozen or so folks with special needs that stuck around. After two days of briefings, and that was the only public representation that was left over on that last hour – people with special needs that were there talking about what they needed from being deaf or hard of hearing or those who just can’t get around, and articulated their needs to us.

Host Beth-Ann Kozlovich: Did that surprise you, that there weren’t more members of the public there?

Teixeira: Yeah, it really did, because as we got into the second day on January 9th in the afternoon, the room selected for the information briefing was pretty crowded, with a lot of faces. And as we approached the 4 o’clock hour though and reconvened, only the folks with special needs were there to talk to us about what they thought we should have.

Be There if You Care

The implication of Teixeira’s remarks is that if the public truly cared about these matters, you would have attended those hearings – staying right to the bitter end.

Leave your job, even fly to Oahu if you’re a neighbor islander and sit through hour upon hour of testimony over two days – that’s what average citizens would have done if you really cared about improving communications to keep your family safe in a crisis.

And maybe that’s what you would do if your job description included what State Civil Defense officials are paid to do – attend endless hours of Capitol hearings.

But you’re not paid to do that, and your inability to be at the Legislature doesn’t mean what Teixeira seems to think it means.

An Inconvenient Truth

State Civil Defense won’t hold public meetings to hear your views at times and places that are convenient to you. The inconvenient truth here is that SCD won’t expose itself to criticism of its communications lapses. Why else would a public agency responsible for public safety during emergencies refuse to meet the public?

We continue to bang away on this topic because there will be future emergencies in which you and I will expect emergency communications to work flawlessly. That didn’t happen in October, and the record of SCD officials’ comments since then suggests they think you are satisfied with their performance.

Again we quote George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And so, too, are we citizens condemned to future communications problems if first responders can’t even acknowledge yesterday’s failures.

“Communications Failure” Becomes “Information Delay” in Orwellian World of State Civil Defense

What are we to make of State Adjutant General Robert Lee’s commentary in last Thursday’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin?

Lee’s piece – which some might read as a personal attack on CHORE’s author – reveals an alarmingly tortured view by the State’s top Civil Defense officer of what most of us would call reality.

In his commentary, Lee denies the existence of communications failures that prevented vital information from reaching the public until well after the October 15th earthquakes. “The complaint by Doug Carlson incorrectly claims that ‘communications failures’ followed the earthquake,” Lee writes.

“The ability of State Civil Defense to inform the public that the earthquake had not generated a tsunami was hampered by the loss of the electric power grid, which shut down most news outlets. This was an information delay, not a failure, and it was thoroughly reported in the news media.” (emphasis added)

“It’s Not Our Fault”

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.

It’s painfully obvious to nearly everyone but State Civil Defense (just ask your friends and neighbors) that the agency itself apparently failed to consider what might happen when the power was out, the cell phone companies and stations' telephone lines were overloaded and broadcasters were knocked off the air. That much is obvious by the agency's failure to work around those communications blockages after the quakes.

As we noted in our first response to Lee’s commentary, a fundamental principle of communications is that the person generating a message must take responsibility for ensuring the message is received. Lee washes his hands of any responsibility for a failure to anticipate the problems that in fact occurred on Earthquake Sunday and produced what he calls an “information delay.”

Why Should We Care?

Had State Civil Defense done an adequate job of anticipating those problems, there would have been no communications failure, the Honolulu Community Media Council wouldn’t have felt compelled to host a panel discussion on emergency communications and CHORE would not have been launched back on October 17th, two days after the quakes.

We should care about this because our families’ safety depends on well-run bureaucracies in times of natural or man-made emergencies in our state. We have a right to expect good, reality-based thinking by the professionals we employ to communicate with us during those emergencies.

And that’s why Maj. General Lee’s rebuttal is both revealing and alarming. We deserve clear-eyed assessments of events when they reveal shortcomings. Otherwise, we’ll be treated to more of the same failures during our next emergency.

We'll continue this discussion in a future post as we examine State Civil Defense's apparent criteria for assessing the public's interest in these matters.

Hearing Impaired Need Better Visuals in a Crisis

As promised earlier this week, CHORE is following up here with comments by a representative of the hearing-impaired community at the Honolulu Community Media Council's “Media and Emergency Response” panel discussion.

Before we do that, we call your attention once again to yesterday’s post with our response to State Adjutant General Robert Lee’s commentary that takes issue with just about everything CHORE has written since the October 15th earthquakes:

General Lee Launches Counter-Offensive at
CHORE; We Respond with Defense-in-Depth

You’ll find our long paragraph-by-paragraph response to General Lee below today’s post.

When Will the Hearing Get It?

Deaf interpreter Larry Littleton of Kauai reminded the Media Council audience that communication must not be merely audible. It must be visual, as well.

“In any emergency, I LOOK for information,” he says. “In any emergency, the hearing LISTEN for information. We are both trying to obtain the same thing, in different modes.”

Littleton later emailed CHORE and asked pointedly, “When are these hearing people going to get it? It is a mockery of any emergency agency to put up a ‘visual emergency scroll’ when NO ONE is monitoring the scroll at the station where it is uploaded.

“Because, if you are one of the over 6,000 hearing-impaired people who reside in the state of Hawaii and you are watching TV with closed captions, the captions will overlap the emergency scroll! This does not include the untold thousands of visitors with hearing loss here on holiday. And I'm not talking about the culturally deaf; I'm talking about our ohana, bless them, who cannot hear due to advancing age.”

Littleton knows of what he speaks. He’s been deaf since 1962 and has more than four decades dealing with inadequate communications designed and dispatched by the hearing. Without a doubt, Littleton or one of his colleagues should have been asked to participate as a member of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee that studied how to improve emergency response.

He could have given them both an ear and eye full. Thanks for your comments, Larry.

General Lee Launches Counter-Offensive at CHORE; We Respond with Defense-in-Depth

Major Gen. Robert G.F. Lee, Hawaii’s adjutant general and director of State Civil Defense, has a commentary in today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin that’s apparently designed to blunt CHORE’s sustained offensive to improve communications to the public during emergencies. (We urge readers to also visit yesterday’s CHORE post, which reported on Tuesday’s “Media and Emergency Response” panel discussion sponsored by the Honolulu Community Media Council.)

Lee’s commentary ends with the following shot, and that’s where our response begins:

Frankly, I don’t understand the purpose of the negative, misdirected attention that Carlson has focused on State Civil Defense. We, along with the county civil defense agencies, the governor's tourism liaison, state Department of Transportation, other state, county and federal agencies, as well as private sector organizations that responded to the earthquake, have been open and honest about what we need to improve. And, as always, we welcome the public's comments and suggestions.

It’s unfortunate the General believes what we wrote in our own Star-Bulletin commentary last week and here at CHORE is negative and misdirected. We have taken pains to be civil in this space; our very first post on October 17 affirmed our intention to help improve communications, not lay blame. As to why we have relentlessly drilled away on these issues, one need only go back to the media coverage following the earthquakes for a memory refresher. Letters to the editor and news reports were filled with citizens’ complaints about both the sustained power outage and the communications void in the early hours of the emergency.

Not A Failure To Communicate?

Back to General Lee’s commentary, starting near the top:

The complaint by Doug Carlson…incorrectly claims that "communications failures" followed the earthquake. The ability of State Civil Defense to inform the public that the earthquake had not generated a tsunami was hampered by the loss of the electric power grid, which shut down most news outlets. This was an information delay, not a failure, and it was thoroughly reported in the news media.

The General seems to say State Civil Defense can’t be faulted if the public was left uninformed in the first hours of the emergency. The failure was in the electric grid, not in the communications, he suggests.

A fundamental principle of communications is that if the message does not get through, there has been a failure to communicate. The communicator must take responsibility for ensuring that the message is actually delivered. This is a basic communications concept that seems to be unappreciated by State Civil Defense, which obviously failed to anticipate what might happen if its cell phones didn’t work due to network overload. Also unanticipated was the inability for Civil Defense officials to call the stations that remained on the air because the phone lines were jammed. The failures didn’t begin with the electric grid’s crash; they began when contingency planning didn’t anticipate the loss of the phone networks. The General’s “information delay” was actually an out-and-out communications failure, no matter how narrowly the hair is split.

A second inaccuracy in Carlson's column is that there was no public representation on the Governor's Comprehensive Communications Review Committee. In fact, the committee, which was appointed for the purpose of improving communications with the public in a disaster or crisis, had 85 members from private businesses or organizations, including nearly every print, TV and radio news outlet statewide. Only 25 participants were from government offices -- county, state and federal.

The General himself says the non-governmental members of the committee were appointed to represent “private businesses or organizations….” The point we first made here at CHORE on October 18, the day after the committee was formed, was that average citizens were not being asked for their input: “This committee won't be "comprehensive" until it gives voice to the people who did not have their fears calmed about a possible tsunami, who did not know why the power was out and for how long and who wondered why 10 or more broadcast outlets were silent for hours or even until the next day. Let's add some men and women to this committee who aren't in the media and Civil Defense. That would make it real.”

The Comprehensive Communications Review Committee’s membership breaks down as follows: Media (radio, TV and print executives, reporters and editors), 69 members; Wireless Representatives (Cingular wireless, Hawaiian Telcom, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless), 12 members; Government Representatives, 24; Additional Representatives, 3 (a tour operator, a Veteran’s Coalition representative, and one unaffiliated person). Despite the massive media representation, not one news report was generated by local media until after the last of four committee meetings. All meetings were held in private – i.e., the public was not given access -- and the committee did not solicit public input prior to the publication of its final report and recommendations. It’s not surprising, given the wireless industry’s representation, that one of those recommendations is to use text messaging on cell phones to communicate emergency information. What does the public think about the viability of that information channel? We don’t know, but we suspect many citizens may be skeptical about the cell phone network’s ability to survive a category 4 hurricane.

Assessing the Public Mood

The next paragraph in General Lee’s commentary refers back to his previous comments:

This fact also counters another of the story's allegations, namely that the public had no input in the decision making about how to improve disaster communications. In the several Disaster Assistance Recovery Centers set up on the Big Island, Maui and Oahu following the earthquake, hundreds of members of the general public met and talked with officials from State Civil Defense, who were rarely asked about the delays in communicating with the public immediately after the earthquake. The same is true of the numerous public gatherings, ranging from legislative briefings to neighborhood board meetings, attended by State Civil Defense leaders, myself included.

It’s not hard to imagine that someone whose home or business was damaged or destroyed by the earthquakes would be more concerned with obtaining reconstruction aid than inquiring about communications problems. Additionally, most accounts said communications on the Big Island were far better than on Oahu. Despite whatever briefings the General and his staff have given to legislative committees and neighborhood boards, they are no substitute for meetings called specifically to brief the public on communications-related issues and what State Civil Defense is doing to improve disaster response. Officials have steadfastly refused to schedule meetings that could be held at the convenience of the public, not State Civil Defense. As we noted here at CHORE on January 29, State Civil Defense’s position seems to be that neighbor island citizens should have traveled to Oahu to attend legislative briefings if they wanted to air their concerns about communications. Until State Civil Defense schedules communications-specific briefings on all the major islands to address how it’s improving disaster response, we’ll continue to question the agency’s responsiveness to the public it’s in business to serve.

More of the Same

Continuing with General Lee’s commentary:

Carlson's last charge is most erroneous and offensive. He claims that "State Civil Defense officials have not briefed the public on what they are doing to improve their communications capabilities." We have responded to media inquiries, briefed lawmakers and members of the general public, and answered phone calls and e-mails on this subject. Additionally, the Governor's Comprehensive Communications Review Committee report was released to the public on Jan. 5. Its 15 key recommendations prompted widespread coverage by the news media.

We’ve already covered what we believe is an inadequate “public information” effort by State Civil Defense. Briefing lawmakers and the news media and the few members of the general public who attend legislative hearings does not constitute a rigorous, public-oriented effort. As we’ve noted at CHORE, a private company that suffers similar communications failures affecting its customers wastes no time in launching such a campaign. Hawaiian Electric briefed the public on its massive October 15th power outage eight days later, and one has to believe it would have done so even without the Public Utilities Commission looking over its shoulder. State Civil Defense is accountable ultimately to the public, and that’s where its communications efforts should have been directed.

Public Safety Is the Issue

General Lee’s commentary concludes two paragraphs later, and we encourage you to read it all the way through. Let’s be clear about our alleged “erroneous and offensive” comments, as he sees them: There is nothing personal in our ongoing effort to focus attention on how State Civil Defense has acted and apparently thinks. Public safety is at the core of our disputatious dialogue with the agency. When General Lee praises KSSK’s efforts on October 15th as “fabulous” – the word he used in his legislative briefing on January 8 – that tells us something about how he and his colleagues think. Encouraging listeners to call the station with their earthquake anecdotes and thereby prevent first responders from calling with their own critical information, as KSSK did early in the crisis, was not “fabulous” emergency broadcasting. Playing the pre-recorded “John Tesh Radio Show” at 7 p.m. while half of Oahu was still suffering through a blackout was not “fabulous” programming. Yet that’s what State Civil Defense told two legislative committees meeting in early January.

This alone is cause for concern by anyone who must rely on KSSK and other emergency broadcast stations during the next hurricane, flood, tsunami or earthquake. We all have the absolute right to question the performance of government officials and private broadcasters when our own life experience tells us their performance was substandard. General Lee obviously thinks we’re out of line. We disagree and will continue to write about these issues until the reasons for our concern have been fully addressed.

We invite you to continue reading and jump down to yesterday’s post, immediately below, for a report on Tuesday’s Media Council meeting on these matters. We’ll provide the additional promised coverage in a future post of the hearing impaired community’s concerns.

Media, CD Adjust Tactics for Emergencies; KSSK’s Ratings Touted To Counter Criticism; State CD’s Absence Leaves an “Empty Chair”

Continuing our report on Tuesday’s Honolulu Community Media Council panel discussion on “Media and Emergency Response”…..

Oahu DEM Wants To Be Quicker

John Cummings of Honolulu County’s Department of Emergency Management (DEM) led off the panel by noting what worked well on October 15th after the two Big Island earthquakes. DEM’s Emergency Operations Center was activated in 17 minutes, and communications among first responders was established quickly.

What needs attention is faster communications to the public. DEM’s first broadcast over radio stations didn’t occur until 50 minutes after the quakes. The agency had anticipated using land lines to contact stations, and that was a major problem, as the stations’ phone lines were clogged with calls from the public. DEM’s personnel had not been trained in using the Emergency Alert System for two years, but State Civil Defense has conducted trainings since October.

Cummings said DEM is developing plans to use the County’s Traffic Information Center as a secondary communications hub in future emergencies. Another goal is to establish a direct link to emergency broadcast station KSSK; DEM currently must route its calls to KSSK through State Civil Defense.

Fixing the Phone Glitch

Chuck Cotton, general manager of the Clear Channel stations in Hawaii (including KSSK) and a member of the Governor-appointed Comprehensive Communications Review Committee, said he felt most media and government officials did a credible job on October 15th. He noted that too many stations were off the air too long, but some stations such as KSSK remained operational during the Hawaiian Electric blackout thanks to backup generators.

Cotton said one of the major lessons learned was to rely on the POT – Plain Old Telephone. With cell phone networks clogged and digital phones inoperative due to the power outage, low-tech telephones plugged into Hawaiian Telcom’s network worked. He also said the Clear Channel stations have begun updating government agencies and other critical communicators with lists of telephone numbers in the stations’ newsrooms and studios. The updates are quarterly, and numbers are changed periodically, as once-private numbers inevitably leak out to the public. (Maintaining lists of unpublished numbers has been one of CHORE's recommendations; Hawaiian Electric learned this lesson the hard way during Hurricane Iwa in 1982, but the lesson was lost in the intervening years – not only to HECO but to civil defense officials.)

A Newspaperman’s Perspective

Honolulu Advertiser Editor Mark Platte joked that from the newspaper’s perspective, the worst possible time for the October emergency to begin was when it did – Sunday morning, about 23 hours before the paper’s next print edition hit the streets. He recounted the difficulty in finding a diesel generator to run the printing press in Kapolei, but he also cited the paper’s success in reporting on the earthquakes and blackout on the Advertiser’s website. Reporters sat in their cars to write on their laptop computers and created stories for the Advertiser’s website, which had 900,000 hits on Sunday and more than one million the next day.

Looking to future emergencies, Platte said a generator will be permanently stationed at the paper’s Kapolei printing facility, and the paper also will find ways to provide power to its Kapiolani Boulevard newsroom.

“Uncontaminated by Information”

Michael Titterton, general manager of Hawaii Public Radio, lamented the loss of electrical power to HPR’s studios on Kaheka Street. Bad as that was, it seemed even worse when power was restored to the stations’ transmitting tower. Titterton brought a laugh from the 70 attendees when he said HPR had a “clean carrier signal uncontaminated by information.”

Titterton said it is especially important for Public Radio to be on the air during periods of community concern, and he’s taking steps to ensure that future blackouts won’t affect HPR. “Some things just have to be done” no matter how daunting the bureaucratic hurdles, he said.

The Blogger’s Pledge – Tactful Directness

CHORE ended the panel discussion by noting that our comments might lack the tact that more time would have afforded. We provided a foundation for our remarks with a brief employment history – KFWB all-news radio in Los Angeles during the February 1971 Sylmar earthquake, and manager of HECO communications during Hurricane Iwa and other major island-wide power outages in the 1980s. That said, we focused our comments on three main points:

• State Civil Defense should have participated in the Media Council panel discussion. SCD is a key link in the communications chain to the public; for the agency to specifically decline participation (as it did several times) suggests a public accountability void. CHORE has advocated SCD briefings for the public since October, and a complete reading of this blog will find several assurances from SCD leaders that meetings would be held (see November 14 post and others). The promised follow-ups to arrange these meetings never happened, and a new explanation for the agency’s reticence was aired on KIPO’s “Town Square” program on February 22; an excerpt can be found in our February 26 post, below. (Marsha Weinert, the State Administration’s liaison to the visitor industry, was to have been on the panel but cancelled on Monday, without a replacement, due to a requirement for her to testify at a hearing at the State Legislature.)

• Emergency broadcast station KSSK could use an “emergency mindset” adjustment. We offered the view that the station’s famed on-air duo of Mike Perry and Larry Price, while deserving of accolades for years of community service and on-air excellence, nevertheless sounded more like their normal entertaining selves on Earthquake Sunday than emergency communicators. They encouraged listeners to phone in with their earthquake anecdotes, which listeners promptly did and thereby clogged telephone lines so thoroughly that first responders couldn’t get through (see earlier comment above on the need to maintain unpublished phone lists for the stations). Unsaid at the luncheon was another criticism of KSSK that’s been noted by many: The station began airing the pre-recorded “John Tesh Radio Show” at 7 p.m. while about half of Oahu was still without electrical power – a decision that reflected the entertainment mindset. CHORE first wrote about this months ago (scroll down to October 22) as the usual accolades were heaped on KSSK and its personalities, yet as we said during the lunch, the uncritical assessments leave no room for improvement, which is something every link in the communications chain must do. (Chuck Cotton responds, below.)

• Honolulu news media failed the public by not reporting regularly on the meetings of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee. The 70-member body met four times in late October and early November before the first newspaper story appeared about its activities. Since public safety was the subject of those meetings, they were newsworthy and deserved coverage. (Mark Platte later acknowledged that his paper and presumably others could have done a more thorough job of reporting on the Review Committee.)

We’re Number One!

Chuck Cotton responded to a couple points raised by CHORE. He said the Review Committee was conceived as a means for industry and government people to discuss ideas on how to improve communications in emergencies. Many ideas were tossed into the mix, he said – some good, some OK and some not so good. He said some members might have been uncomfortable if those ideas were subjected to outside scrutiny. (CHORE’S COMMENT: Since the public is the ultimate consumer of emergency information, the public deserves a seat at the table. We went so far as to say every government apparatus can benefit from exposure to public opinion, which should not be excluded.)

Cotton defended KSSK’s performance during the October emergency and in the end seemed to rely on the station’s immense popularity for his primary argument. Perry & Price have the highest morning drive time ratings in the nation, he said, so they must be doing something right. (CHORE’S COMMENT: Those ratings are for an entertainment show that features light banter, music and listener participation, most or all of which is inappropriate during an emergency.)

We’ll follow up tomorrow with additional comments from the luncheon, including assertions by a representative of the hearing impaired that reliance on radio doesn’t help his community in a crisis. Thanks for reading.

Panel Reveals Better Media Response Abilities While Leaving Room for More Improvement

Today’s Honolulu Community Media Council luncheon revealed improvements in how Oahu’s Department of Emergency Management (formerly Oahu Civil Defense) and the local media are preparing to respond to future emergencies. We’ll detail those improvements in posts to CHORE in the next couple days while also focusing on issues revealed in the discussion that seemingly could stand more work.

The remarks of panelists Chuck Cotton, Mark Platte, Michael Titterton, John Cummings and CHORE’s writer were complemented by audience comments from the floor. All in all, it was an exceptionally successful beginning to the “new” Media Council's year, with many more compelling programs to come.

And “to come” is our slug to end this post. Mahalo for all who attended and filled the room today. Be sure to come back tomorrow for more.

Media Council Panel on Crisis Response To Have No Representative from State Administration

Tuesday’s lunch meeting of the Honolulu Community Media Council will be a long-awaited public discussion on the communications failures experienced on Earthquake Sunday, October 15th, 2006, and what’s being done to improve emergency communications to the public.

A panel of community volunteers, the media and a representative of the Oahu Department of Emergency Management (formerly Oahu Civil Defense) will explore “Media and Emergency Response.”

But we won’t see a representative of the State Administration there. As noted previously here at CHORE, State Civil Defense had declined to participate on the panel for unknown reasons, but one did emerge on KIPO's "Town Square" program last Thursday (see below).

And now we’ve learned that Marsha Weinert, the State’s liaison to the visitor industry, won’t be there either. Weinart said earlier today she’s opting out due to a conflict at the State Legislature. No alternate representative has been volunteered to replace her.

Read the recent posts here at CHORE for a rundown on who will be speaking on the panel.

New Explanation for SCD's Low Profile

Hawaii Public Radio’s KIPO devoted its “Town Square” program on February 22 to a discussion on this same subject – improving communications to the public during emergencies. The guests were Weinert and State Civil Defense Vice Director Ed Teixeira; you can download the MP3 file of the program here.

CHORE called the show and once again extended an invitation to Teixeira to attend Tuesday’s panel discussion or send a representative. If you don't want to listen to the first 50 minutes of the program before finding our exchange, here’s how the dialogue went after we set the stage by describing the panel and luncheon:

CHORE: We hope, Ed, that you can make it. We haven’t really been told I don’t believe whether you’re going to be able to attend and be a member of the panel, but if you can’t, we hope someone else from State Civil Defense can be a participant. What do you say?

Host Beth-Ann Kozlovich (laughing): I think you’re trying to Shanghai him. I don’t know, Doug, what to tell you. I mean, Ed, you don’t have your schedule here so I don’t know whether….

Teixeira: You know, Doug, I think I turned it down.

CHORE: Yeah, I think you did, and it really would seem to be much less of an event without State Civil Defense being there. If you can’t make it because of your schedule, is it a possibility that somebody else can?

Teixeira: There’s a possibility as well, but one of the things that I was looking forward to talking on the show today is that, there has been sort of like an over focus on State Civil Defense. You gotta realize our part. Our part here is to back up county civil defense. You look at the counties. Their response is why they’re called the first responder. So we can’t overlook the county civil defense agencies. They were also key participants in the Governor’s Comprehensive Communications Review Committee as well. So you can get our thoughts on our planning and where we’re at in building our capabilities and strengthening our plans, our own lessons learned. But you know, there’s a missing key here, a very very critical part, you know, the county civil defense agencies. And I know you’re an advocate and you still urge us to get out there and talk to the public, and we did talk to that in about the first 10 or 15 minutes of the show today. But as I was getting ready to launch out and do some open forums with the public, I had to rethink it all. I want to stay within our own lane, and I don’t want to get out there into a county agency or a county environment without the participation of the county civil defense agencies, because they really got first dibs in talking with the people. That’s where it lies.

Kozlovich: Doug, I know you want to follow up with a very quick question. We’re running out of time.

CHORE: Real quickly, Ed, I know you’d be happy to know that Oahu Civil Defense has accepted the invitation to be there, and they will be there on Tuesday. But I hope that you can add the State’s great perspective to the whole problem, since we seemed to be looking to State Civil Defense on October 15th for the information that we needed, and it’s not too late to RSVP….

So that's where it lies. State Civil Defense isn't anxious to meet with the public and participate in an open discussion about its emergency communications plans because, we're told, it doesn't want to get in the way of the county agencies.

We'll have an opportunity to hear from the Oahu agency on Tuesday and ask how it feels to have the State backing it up all the way................... from a distance.

Today Is RSVP Deadline for Media Council Meeting; Count Is Already Approaching 70

The “Media and Emergency Response” theme of next Tuesday’s Honolulu Community Media Council’s meeting seems to have struck a chord with the public. Nearly 70 people already have reserved a seat at the Ala Moana Hotel luncheon, which will feature a panel discussion among representatives of the media, government and the public.

Reservations for the $20 lunch can still be made today by calling 596-2121. Registration on Tuesday will begin at 11:30, and the program will end at 1:30.

This will be the first opportunity for the public to question media and civil defense officials about their response to the communications failures that followed the October 15th earthquakes. Those failures included the temporary shutdown of 80 percent of the state’s broadcast stations, with some of them knocked off the air for more than 24 hours. Those that did continue broadcasting had difficulty accessing reliable information in the early hours of the emergency.

Scroll down to CHORE's recent posts for information on the panel’s participants, who will start the program with their brief assessments of the topic. Audience members will be invited to share their views and question the panel.

Newspaper Commentary Touts Feb. 27 Panel; Oahu Civil Defense Agrees To Participate

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin published CHORE's commentary yesterday on next week's panel discussion sponsored by the Honolulu Community Media Council.

Not mentioned in the piece was the equallly quick decision by Oahu Civil Defense to join the panel discussion on "Media and Emergency Response." State Civil Defense, which has taken the brunt of critical comment about the October 15th Earthquake Sunday communications failures, has yet to accept a similar invitation to participate.

It should be emphasized that the Media Council meeting won't be a game of Gotcha. Its sponsor is a highly respected organization of volunteers -- the oldest of the three volunteer media councils that exist in the United States. The Council is composed of individuals from the community and media and is a non- partisan, non-profit, non-governmental independent group that seeks to improve public access to information, strengthen public support for First Amendment rights and freedoms, broaden public understanding of the role of the media, and promote accurate and fair journalism in Hawaii.

Next week's panel discussion will explore how the media are improving their ability to respond to emergencies that island residents frequently must confront -- hurricanes, tsunamis, power blackouts, volcanic eruptions, floods, freeway closures.... It's a subject worthy of public interest and involvement, and the public is invited to attend and participate in the discussion from the floor.

Reservations can be made through Friday February 23rd by calling 596-2121. The luncheon's cost is $20, paid at the door. Registration begins at 11:30, and the panel discussion will conclude at 1:30.

Media Council’s Public Meeting Will Give Citizens Their First Insights on Disaster Communications

If you want to know how or whether Hawaii’s news media are working to improve their disaster response capabilities, be sure you have lunch with the Honolulu Community Media Council on February 27. Information on the “Media and Emergency Response” panel discussion and lunch can be found in an earlier CHORE post.

This will be the public’s only opportunity to participate in emergency response discussions since the communications fiasco on Earthquake Sunday, October 15, 2006. Average citizens weren’t represented on the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee and therefore had no opportunity for input to this group’s official recommendations to improve emergency communications.

Despite calls here and elsewhere for public participation, the Governor and State Civil Defense have made it clear they want no part of an open meeting at which citizens could get answers and be heard. Legislative hearings have not adequately served that purpose, and although we thought legislators might ask for meetings around the state, there’s been no such demand.

That leaves the Media Council’s lunch meeting as the only forum to date where citizens can hear key players in the emergency communications chain describe what they’re doing to keep us informed in future disasters.

Broadcast and print journalism will be represented on the Media Council panel, as will the State Administration, although apparently not by State Civil Defense; the agency has not indicated it will accept the Council’s invitation to participate.

The Council will need your RSVP by February 23, so call the number shown in the earlier post to participate in improving communications that will help ensure your family’s safety.

“Media and Emergency Response” To Be Focus Of Honolulu Community Media Council Panel

The Honolulu Community Media Council has scheduled a lunch meeting on February 27 open to the public that will feature a panel discussion on “Media and Emergency Response.”

The event will begin at 11:30 in the hotel’s Carnation Room, followed by lunch and the program, which will conclude at 1:30. The lunch’s cost is $20; reservations can be made until February 23 by calling Veronica at 596-2121. (Tell her you read about the luncheon here at CHORE.)

HCMC president Chris Conybeare said the panel will examine the difficulties experienced by government and the media on October 15th after two strong earthquakes rattled the state and prompted a major power outage on Oahu. At one point, 70 percent of the state’s broadcast stations were off the air, which restricted the flow of emergency information to the public.

Conybeare said the panel also will discuss measures taken since Earthquake Sunday to strengthen media operations and improve the chain of emergency communications from State Civil Defense and other authorities to the public.

Panelists confirmed as participants include Mark Platte, editor of The Honolulu Advertiser; Chuck Cotton, vice president and general manager of seven Honolulu radio stations owned by Clear Channel; Michael Titterton, general manager of Hawaii Public Radio; Marsha Weinert, the State Administration’s liaison to the visitor industry and co-chair of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee that proposed communications improvements after the October 15th earthquakes, and CHORE's writer.

State Civil Defense has been invited to send a representative and participate in the panel discussion.

Disaster Preparedness Hearings

Elsewhere, legislative hearings have begun on improving disaster preparedness. HB 1006 was the focus this afternoon; it proposes establishing the Office of the Director of Disaster Preparedness and a Disaster Preparedness Commission to develop a disaster preparedness plan for Hawaii that includes the identification of hazards and hazard impact zones; disaster mitigation policies, requirements, and incentives; and best responses. The intent seems to be to impose an additional level of oversight above State Civil Defense to improve responsiveness over what was experienced in October.

If the daily papers fail to cover this bill's provisions, we’ll summarize them later.

One Door Closes and Another One Opens: Citizens Turn to Legislature for Answers

The Governor has made it clear the public will not have a chance to question State Civil Defense officials about the communication failures of Earthquake Sunday, October 15, 2006. She says it’s all about the future now, not the past:

“We are now focused on a statewide education program to better prepare for the future,” she wrote in her on-line chat on Wednesday. Translation: “Forget about what went wrong on October 15th. We’ve done our in-house review and have everything handled. Trust us to do what’s best.”

Just last Sunday, the Governor’s senior communications advisor wrote a long column for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that touted the Administration’s restoration of “trust and confidence in government through greater transparency and accountability.”

You’re heard the phrase, “Don’t pay attention to what politicians say. Pay attention to what politicians do.” Here’s something State Civil Defense – and therefore, the politicians to whom they report -- did that we need to pay attention to. We’ve written about this before, but it deserves another visit:

On October 29th, the Star-Bulletin reported on emergency siren “gap areas” – 148 communities around the state not adequately covered by an emergency siren. That itself was remarkable news since we’re told the sirens would be critical in alerting the public in future emergencies.

Enforcing Accountability

The most amazing part of the story, however, was that “officials would not disclose the individual communities not covered by the system,” according to the newspaper.

How’s that for clear thinking within the agency we’re supposed to rely on for public safety information? It took a public information request by the Star-Bulletin before SCD would inform citizens living in these gaps that they’re unprotected by the sirens.

It’s obvious our government’s “transparency and accountability” still need work through greater public oversight, and it may come in a measure soon to be considered at the Legislature. Stay tuned here and in the media for information about legislative initiatives, including H.B. 1006.

When one branch of government shuts out citizen input, we have to turn to another. Now's the time.

On-Line Chat with Governor Recalls Slugger McGwire’s Testimony: Let’s Talk About Future, Not the Past; i.e., We Won’t Hold the Meetings

Former baseball hero Mark McGwire famously dodged questions two years ago at a congressional hearing into alleged steroid use in his sport by answering: “I'm not here to talk about the past. I'm here to be positive about this subject." When pressed with more questions, McGwire answered, "Like I said earlier, I'm not going to go into the past and talk about my past."

That pretty much sums up Governor Linda Lingle’s response to a question posed by CHORE during the Honolulu Advertiser’s “Hot Seat” chat room today. Here’s our question to Hawaii’s Chief Executive:

“Governor, don't you think it would be a good idea for State Civil Defense to conduct confidence-building public meetings on each island to discuss the problems it experienced on Earthquake Sunday and measures taken since then to improve emergency communications to the public? SCD is resisting holding these meetings. What do you think?”

And this is the Governor’s response:

“I think it important both to review past experiences and focus on the future. We have done an extensive review of what happened on October 15, 2006, the day the earthquake hit and have published a report on how to improve our response in the future. We are now focused on a statewide education program to better prepare for the future.”

Since Advertiser editorial page editor Jeanne Mariani-Belding discouraged follow-up questions from chat room visitors, we were unable to take issue with the State’s review and its major flaw: The public was excluded from any participation, a point we first wrote about here on October 18th.

Given the opportunity, we politely would have raised the conflict-of-interest issue – the review of a State agency’s performance (Civil Defense) by a committee selected by the executive ultimately responsible for that performance, chaired by one of her senior advisors, co-chaired by the director of the agency in question, etc. (You can review who was on the committee by going to this Governor's Office press release and clicking on the PDF document at the bottom.)

Where’s the Independence?

The Governor’s review was just that – her review – and was far from the independent assessment advocated shortly after the earthquakes by a Honolulu Star-Bulletin editorial, “Independent panel should review earthquake response.” By excluding the public from the committee and holding no meetings to receive public comment and questions about the substandard emergency communications response on October 15th, the government avoids the embarrassment of having to own up to those deficiencies in an open forum.

As we noted here Monday, it may take intervention by State legislators to convene their own open forums on each island to which State Civil Defense and the public would be invited. This would seem to be the only way the Administration will meet the public to discuss the public safety issues that were revealed on October 15th.

It shouldn’t have to be that way, but that’s the way it is.

State Civil Defense Disses Public Meeting Idea, Says Citizens Already Had Their Opportunity

Nobody knows what’s next in life, so we really have no idea whether State Civil Defense will relent and conduct public meetings on each island to engage citizens in a dialogue on emergency communications – as it should, in CHORE’s opinion.

That said, I’d bet the farm it won’t if today’s informational briefing testimony revealed SCD’s rock-bottom intentions. And I’d double the bet that it won’t happen without intervention from State legislators.

CHORE was first to testify at the briefing held by two legislative committees; we focused on our ongoing theme that the public has been improperly excluded from the post-earthquake discussions on how to improve emergency communications.

We argued that improving emergency communications is not a one-way street, with a government-dominated committee deciding what’s good for us without talking to us. Legislators surely know the value of citizen input. Ignore it, and they’re out of a job, but that’s not the mindset at State Civil Defense.

One Hearing Was Enough?

State Adjutant General Robert Lee followed CHORE’s testimony and countered it by noting the public already has had its chance for input into the post-earthquake assessment. When? During one hour of the January 9 hearing conducted by two legislative committees, that’s when. Also, according to Maj. Gen. Lee, the public sent e-mails and made phone calls to SCD, and the Governor received a few letters, too.

With all due respect to General Lee, that is not a strong position, sir. It means that if neighbor island residents wanted to help SCD do a better job by giving them feedback on the October 15th communications breakdown, they should have flown to Oahu to testify at that hearing -- at their own cost and inconvenience.

We just can’t go along with that kind of thinking, which doesn’t fit in with the Administration’s alleged “greater transparency and accountability” that we’ve read about recently.

Legislators, Please Sign In

We really don’t see these meetings happening without legislators on each island firmly asking State Civil Defense to include the public in the emergency communications dialogue. Citizens who want to communicate with their senators and representatives can find their emails at the Hawaii Legislature web portal.

Better Civil Defense Communication Set as Topic Of Informational Briefing Monday at Capitol

Two legislative committees will meet Monday afternoon to hear how “state civil defense (can) improve communication with general public when a man-made or natural disaster occurs.”

CHORE has a few ideas along those lines and hopes to present testimony during the scheduled three-hour briefing, which begins at 1 p.m. in conference room 423 at the Capitol.

Specifically mentioned as prospective attendees are members of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee, along with just about every known agency and entity that could possibly be involved in weather-related and other disasters – county mayors, the National Weather Service, radio hams, hotel reps, FEMA, the FCC, TV and radio stations, the PUC, the DOE and others….and the public.

It will be interesting to see just where the public fits into the proceedings. As CHORE has said repeatedly, the public hasn’t been invited into the discussion until now. With no average citizens among its 70 members, the Governor-appointed Review Committee isn’t truly “comprehensive,” as we noted one day after its creation.

Making Room for Citizens

Here are a couple paragraphs from our testimony:

“If State Civil Defense truly wants to improve communication with the public – and I believe it does – it will hold public meetings and solicit comments, questions and concerns from citizens about what went right and wrong on Earthquake Sunday. What average citizens think presumably should matter to Civil Defense officials."

“If Civil Defense agencies were not in the business of serving average citizens, those agencies would not even exist. Citizens are the ultimate consumers of emergency information and could have described their communications habits, likes and dislikes – information that would have added value to the committee’s deliberations. The public should have been at the table.”

Here’s hoping our legislators agree and will urge State Civil Defense to conduct meetings with citizens across the state and be a player in restoring “public trust and confidence in government through greater transparency and accountability.”

State Civil Defense Still Mum on Meeting

“One week, two weeks, three weeks, four;
give them a little, then wait some more.”

State Civil Defense officials probably don’t consciously treat inquiries from average citizens and taxpayers that way. But repeated emails and calls to SCD urging a meeting to describe the agency’s new and allegedly improved emergency communications procedures have not produced a substantive response.

CHORE’s email justifying such a meeting was sent two weeks ago to Vice Director Ed Teixeira. CHORE called public information specialist Dave Curtis a week later to follow up. Mr. Curtis described his personal feelings about such a meeting -- “I do not believe this is something we would like to do” – so we sent the justification once again to Mr. Teixeira. We’ve heard nothing since.

Maybe SCD’s leadership is simply too busy to deal with bloggers, but that in itself says something about an agency’s ability and willingness to communicate under duress. As CHORE wrote in December, “It would be inconceivable for a private company to be as unresponsive to public inquiry after a major public safety incident as State Civil Defense has been.”

Suspecting legislators might evoke a response, CHORE wrote four days ago to Rep. Cindy Evans, chair of the House Public Safety & Military Affairs Committee, and Rep. Robert Herkes, chair of the House Consumer Protection & Commerce Committee, that began: “Your influence in bringing State Civil Defense to a meeting with the public to explain the agency’s deficiencies on Earthquake Sunday and subsequent improvements is sorely needed. It likely will not happen without direction from you….

“Thank you for whatever help you can provide in bringing State Civil Defense to a public session — not for vilification, but to ensure that the public is apprised of communications improvements already made and that SCD can benefit from citizens’ responses and evaluation of same.”

Citizens who agree are encouraged to make your views known to Representative Evans and Representative Herkes.

Public Meeting Status: No Change, No Progress

The State Civil Defense recipient of our January 11th email had this response today about the public meeting we're advocating: "I do not believe this is something we would like to do." He stressed it's his personal opinion and that he's not had time to talk with Vice Director Ed Teixeira due to the latter's busy schedule.

Staffer Dave Curtis implied a meeting is unnecessary because SCD has been responsive to the public's emails and telephone calls. CHORE has been ineffective in presenting our case to Dave, a radio newsroom veteran, on why meeting with the public would be a demonstration of the agency's responsiveness and willingness to entertain the public's views.

We've resent the email -- this time directly to Ed -- and hope for a positive response when he's considered the value of meeting with the public as described in our message.

List of Communities Without Sirens No Longer Secret; Newspaper Forces Information Release

One of the more remarkable disclosures since the October 15th earthquakes came on October 29th, when the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported on nearly 150 “gap areas” unprotected by the State's emergency siren system.

The gaps themselves are regrettable enough, of course, but as CHORE noted that day, the most astounding disclosure in the story was State Civil Defense’s refusal to say which communities are in the gaps. We asked:

“How does refusing to tell citizens where these gaps exist serve the public good? Families living in a gap area certainly deserve to know about it and that whatever sense of security they have the sirens will alert them in an emergency is false.”

To its credit, the Star-Bulletin didn’t let the issue die and filed a “public records request” that produced what it calls Siren Weak Points around the state; the list is in today’s edition.

The list is unsettling. How do you suppose parents with children in Enchanted Lake Elementary feel, knowing the school is on the list? Or people who frequent Kapiolani Park and the five other Oahu parks listed, or residents of Sunset Beach, Velzyland, Palolo Valley, Mililani, Kahuku, Waianae, Ewa, Pearl City…? The list is extensive.

Every inhabited island except Niihau is represented (the Robinson family must have it handled), so this emergency communications deficiency has been allowed to grow until it’s now a statewide problem. Maybe more than a little of the projected $700 million State budget surplus can be spent on correcting this public safety problem.

Who Are These guys?

For only the second time, we read in today’s Bulletin about the existence of the Science Advisory Working Group, which the paper says “spent months studying communications glitches experienced during the earthquake, as well as the public’s response to it.”

The only other mention of this local group was in the October 29th story, which said it would make recommendations to the state about improving alert systems and boosting public education. A Google search produces only three hits for this particular SAWG (there are others around the planet) -- the two Star-Bulletin stories and CHORE’s 10/29 post.

Doesn’t that seem odd? Here’s a committee of some kind that’s studying how to improve emergency communications to the public, and its existence is virtually unknown. Except for its chair, we don’t know who sits on it, what their agendas are (everybody and every agency has them) and how the members presume to know what’s best for the public and how to reach us in an emergency.

It’s highly probable that the public isn’t a part of the study group, just as average citizens weren't on the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee appointed by the Governor to recommend improvements in emergency communications. Once again, citizens are on the outside.

Defining the “Overriding Issue”

The reason this matters is to be sure the committees making decisions about public safety communications don’t make bad ones. For instance, CHORE doesn’t know with certainty what the overriding issue is in this emergency communications debate, but we’re pretty sure it’s not the public’s “lack of education.”

Yet according to today’s Star-Bulletin story, that’s what the SAWG’s chair thinks it is: "You can have all the bells and whistles in the world, but if the citizenry, the news media and the visitor industry don't understand what a tsunami is and what they should do in the event of a tsunami ... if they don't know that, we are in deep trouble."

We’re already in deep trouble, and it’s not the public’s fault!

The overriding issue surely is the government’s demonstrated inability to safeguard the public with timely emergency information on October 15th. The overriding issue actually is many issues – the siren gap; outdated agency communications protocols; the broadcast industry’s backup power deficiencies; some broadcasters' poor performance on Earthquake Sunday, and undoubtedly others that members of the public could readily identify if asked.

The Public Must Be Involved

Yet because the public is not represented on the SAWG and the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee, the public's “lack of education” becomes the overriding issue.

And that’s what happens when priorities are left to our friends in government. They get to decide where the buck stops, and they seem to think it stops with us.

Professional emergency communicators and planners can’t pass the buck that easily. We citizens expect every dollar spent on experts’ salaries and their communications infrastructure to actually improve our safety. Recent events show that’s not happening.

The public must and can be brought into the picture. This will happen when State Civil Defense holds the public meeting it seemingly is committed to scheduling, based on recent contacts. CHORE anticipates progress will be made toward that end this week.

Encouraging Rapid Response to Kuril Earthquake

• See January 11th post for latest on proposed State Civil Defense public meeting to review improvements to emergency communications procedures.
• Go to the bottom of this post for commentary on how Honolulu's two daily newspapers played the Tsunami Watch story. The contrast is amazing.

KITV broke into programming this evening around 7:15 for a "live" report by weather guy Justin Fujioka on the magnitude 8.3 earthquake east of the Kuril Islands that has triggered a Tsunami Watch for Hawaii.

We received our first notice of the 6:23 p.m. HST quake via email from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center/NOAA/NWS 30 minutes later, at 6:53 p.m. The email said a tsunami, if generated and if it reaches Hawaii, would arrive at 12:23 Saturday morning at Nawiliwili, 12:41 at Honolulu and 12:58 at Hilo. That first message -- and no other has been received as of 7:20 p.m. HST -- stressed that it's not known whether a tsunami has been generated.

From CHORE's perspective, it's good to see KITV jumping into the fray as early as it did. This can only strengthen the station's reputation; it was the only station capable of sending reports out of state on October 15th after the Hawaii quakes. We're not paying much attention to television this evening, but our unscientific channel-changing survey has found no "crawls" or programming interruptions on the other outlets.

• 8 p.m. Update: KITV and KGMB-TV break into programming with "live" reports on the Tsunami Watch. Still no confirmation that a tsunami was generated. • 8:15: KGMB breaks in again, including a phone interview with a City spokesman at the Oahu Civil Defense center. Anchor gives wrong arrival time for potential tsunami of 9 p.m., corrects mistake minutes later. No sign yet of State Civil Defense in this state-wide Tsunami Watch, although it's possible it could have been seen on other stations. • 8:30: KITV goes "live" with phone interview with State Civil Defense official, who reports on emergency center preparations. Anchor asks about potential impact on homeless encampments on leeward beaches; spokesman says a warning, if announced, would trigger evacuation of all beaches. • 8:40: KHNL gives brief "live" report on Watch and plugs 9 p.m. newscast on sister station KFVE. KITV runs a crawl across "Desparate Housewives." • 9:02: KFVE actually has a "live" status report from inside the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, perhaps hinting at PTWC sensitivity to criticism of its "remoteness" from the media in past tsunami events (see the Tsunami Lessons blog in general and the March 30, 2005 post in particular for some observations about the PTWC and its relationship with the news media). • 9:30: Another KFVE report from the PTWC says the Tsunami Watch is cancelled based on readings from bouys in the Pacific. KITV's "live" update a few minutes later advises caution on beaches due to possible ocean surges.

CONCLUSION: The media and Civil Defense response to this Tsunami Watch is superior to the emergency-related events we've experienced in the past three months; of course, this one happened at an optimum time -- a weeknight with news teams at the ready and CD officials reachable. Regretably, we didn't monitor radio stations to see how they handled this alert.
• 7 a.m. Saturday Update: By running the Tsunami Watch story on page B-1 this morning and giving it all of about 6 inches of space, with no maps and no quotes from Civil Defense and PTWC officials, the Honolulu Advertiser continues its under-reporting of emergency communications issues. It virtually ignored the activities of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee for weeks and in general is overshadowed consistently by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin's treatment of this ongoing story that affects public safety. The paper's news judgment on issues uppermost in citizens' minds is remarkable.
• 9 a.m. Update: You have to be glad this is a two-newspaper town. The Star-Bulletin, by far the smaller of our two dailies, gave the Watch story top-of-page-one treatment -- a six-column headline ("Tsunami watch surges Hawaii fears" that seems to have caught last night's mood right), with a map showing the earthquake's location -- and about another 20 inches and a photo from inside the PTWC on the jump page. The note at the end says four Bulletin reporters and the Associated Press contributed to the report. In other words, the SB was all over this story. The Advertiser? Less than 6 inches, with no quotes, no maps and no photos under a two-column headline on B-1 in the edition delivered to our house. You be the judge of which paper is doing a better job covering public safety and emergency communications issues, and if you conclude the Advertiser is under-reporting them, visit this page and let the paper's leadership know what you think.

State Civil Defense Invites Input on Proposed Meeting; Capitol Auditorium Suggested as Site

An encouraging dialogue has begun with State Civil Defense that could well lead to the public meeting that CHORE has been pushing for over the past three months. We won’t go so far as to call the proposed meeting a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but like the South African process, it would indeed reveal the truth about emergency communications in this state and foster greater understanding and even reconciliation between SCD and citizens who have been shut out of the review process on why emergency communications failed after the earthquakes on October 15th and how it can be improved to serve the public.

SCD information officer Dave Curtis asked for an email today outlining why the meeting would be useful and what it might cover. CHORE produced the following, which is posted here in the spirit of transparency:

Email to State Civil Defense:

Dave, I'm glad State Civil Defense seems to have a positive attitude about holding a meeting to brief the public on what worked to communicate emergency information on October 15th and what didn’t, and how communications procedures have been improved since then.

You noted in our phone call that you’ve read some of the CHORE blog, and I’ll include a few links, below, to supplement this email. All of the reasons why the meeting is the right thing to do, in my view, have been written in the blog many times, so I won’t spend a lot of time here. With the links, Ed Teixeira can easily find the major points that have been made repeatedly.

Everyone, including SCD, has acknowledged the poor flow of information to the public after the earthquakes and during the first hours of the power blackout on Oahu. Given that breakdown, our request for a public meeting should be easy to understand. Citizens are the ultimate consumers of emergency information; we rely on it for our safety, so when that communications breaks down, citizens have every reason and right to be concerned and to want an opportunity to evaluate whether the improvements to serve them better will in fact meet their needs.

Only State Civil Defense can provide the information citizens need to be informed on these matters. As a public agency, SCD reasonably should be responsive to the citizens it seeks to inform. Private companies that experience major problems in their operations that impact the public generally move quickly to address the public’s concerns with press conferences, consumer meetings and other outreach programs. SCD has done none of that in the past three months, and it is not unreasonable to conclude that the agency apparently has seen no need to do so. Under different circumstances, Hawaiian Electric Company briefed the public eight days after the earthquakes; of course, HECO is overseen by and is responsive to a public agency, unlike Civil Defense.

Giving the Public a Voice

The meeting we seek would finally bring the public into the process of reviewing the communications problems on Earthquake Sunday. As you know, the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee did not include the public in its membership or seek to receive the public’s views during its four meetings. We argued as early as October 18th that this committee “won't be ‘comprehensive’ until it gives voice to the people who did not have their fears calmed about a possible tsunami, who did not know why the power was out and for how long and who wondered why 10 or more broadcast outlets were silent for hours or even until the next day.”

We also believe a public meeting might challenge the official version about what happened on October 15th. Specifically, we heard as recently as three days ago from the State Adjutant General and at least one legislator that the designated emergency broadcasting station did a “fabulous” job that day. The CHORE blog has noted several times that KSSK’s performance left much to be desired. Two facts stand out:

• KSSK’s personalities essentially transplanted their “entertainment” model for their usual weekday program into their October 15th emergency response. Seemingly unaware that circumstances were entirely different, they invited residents to phone the station to tell them what the earthquake felt like at their homes. The flood of telephone calls prevented SCD and HECO communicators from phoning in with information the public needed, and as much as three hours elapsed before official SCD information could be broadcast.

• With half the island of Oahu still without power at 7 p.m. on October 15th, KSSK ended its “live” programming and began broadcasting the syndicated John Tesh Radio Show, a recorded three-hour program, and cut back its reporting on the blackout to reports on the half-hour. This business-as-usual approach in the midst of an ongoing emergency for tens of thousands of Oahu families can hardly be called “fabulous.”

As long as top State officials are publicly laudatory about the station’s performance, KSSK will see no need for self-evaluation and improvement. Indeed, the entire broadcast industry here needs a reality check on its ability to serve the public interest in emergencies.

I hope we’ll have a chance to schedule a meeting relatively soon before much more time goes by. It might be reasonable to conduct the meeting in the State Capitol Auditorium on a weekday, when legislators, their staffs, the media and citizens easily could attend. HECO’s briefing on October 23 in that room could be the model. As is my custom on the CHORE blog to keep my involvement as transparent as possible, I will post this email there.

Aloha...

URL links to past CHORE posts:

Wednesday, October 18, 2006
The "Comprehensive Communications Review
Committee" Is Missing Something: The Public

Sunday, October 22, 2006
Let’s Not Be Too Quick with the Anointing Oil
While the Jury’s Still Out on Media Response

Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Will State Civil Defense Brief the Public on
Quake Communications and Improvements?
(Includes What a Civil Defense Briefing Could Cover)

Sunday, October 29, 2006
Tsunami Sirens Inadequate To Warn Isles, but
Officials Won’t Say Who Lives in Silent Peril

Thursday, November 23, 2006
15 Minutes Pass Before ‘No-Tsunami Crawl'
Appears on TV after Thanksgiving Earthquake

Thursday, January 04, 2007
Until the Public Is Served, Homeland Security
Communications Scorecard Is Meaningless

Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Hearings Accentuate Need for Civil Defense
Public Meeting; Legislators Asked To Help

Hearings Accentuate Need for Civil Defense Public Meeting; Legislators Asked To Help

CHORE sent the following email today to the members of the three legislative committees that held hearings earlier this week on Hawaii’s emergency response to the October 15th earthquakes:

Committee members, your hearings this week were a tremendous public service. Thank you for addressing the critical public safety issue of emergency communications effectiveness in our community.

Yesterday’s hearing revealed how lessons learned in emergency situations can be unlearned with the passage of time and turnover of personnel. As HECO's manager of corporate communications and spokesman in the 1980s, I and my colleagues were unable to telephone KGU, the designated emergency station, the night of November 23, 1982 when Hurricane Iwa struck, for the same reason HECO’s current managers were stymied on October15th in calling KSSK:

If you have only the telephone book’s numbers for local radio stations, you may as well have no numbers. You simply can’t get through, especially if the station is encouraging listeners to call in with their anecdotes.

We learned in 1982 that a list of unpublished numbers is essential. We therefore worked with the radio industry in the subsequent months to develop that list of non-published emergency-only numbers and used it on “Black Wednesday,” July 13, 1983, when all of Oahu lost power due to a sugar cane fire in Ewa.

HECO and KSSK obviously have unlearned the lessons of the 1980s. Just as obviously, private and public officials have more game-planning to do for major disaster scenarios. For example, at Monday’s hearing, Major General Lee expressed his complete satisfaction with KSSK’s performance on Earthquake Sunday, a point some of us dispute (see my blog’s post on October 22). When asked what would happen if the station lost power, General Lee noted that KSSK was selected as the emergency station in part because it has its own backup generator and won’t go black.

But what if it does lose power? What’s the backup plan? We heard nothing about a scenario such as a category 4 hurricane that might destroy KSSK’s tower. Military doctrine emphasizes the importance of “defense in depth.” We have no idea what State Civil Defense’s plans are if its first line of defense crumbles.

That’s why my CHORE blog has advocated repeatedly that a public meeting is warranted to hash out all these matters, explain October 15th in detail, answer the public’s questions and demonstrate responsiveness to the public’s concerns. Your assistance is sought in encouraging General Lee and Vice Director Teixeira to conduct such a meeting, ideally in the Capitol Auditorium so as to be convenient to legislators and your staff members.

Aloha and best wishes,