[EAS] Radio and Maui: A Failure To Communicate?

[Gregory Muir]

Thanks, Bill.  And Clay, you always have some very pragmatic views of EW systems given your experiences.  Good input.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
Ii guess both Bill and I share the title of "curmudgeon."  When working at one company the top guy would bring visitors by my office and introduce me as the "company curmudgeon."  But it was the job of myself and a few others to dig out all of the possible failure scenarios in our systems to help improve the designs, reduce potential failures and generate fix workarounds for those systems that sort of left the bounds of our earth and were rather difficult to access to fix.
 
I have a respect for the Hawaii Emergency Services department.  Some time back I was stationed on the Big Island working on a project for the government up near the top of Mauna Loa, one of the two active volcanoes on the island.  A part of an unrelated "hobby" in my spare time was assisting the Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory (HVO) with some of their technical things that included sensing possible eruptions before they happened as well as their in-house communications system.  From that I managed to obtain a brief overview of the island emergency warning network that was in place.  It is quite comprehensive and effectively serves nearly all populated areas on the islands and is described as an "all-hazard siren system" to alert residents to natural disasters and other emergency situations, "including tsunamis, hurricanes, dam breaches, flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, terrorist threats, hazardous material incidents, and more."  And the monthly tests always proved that the system was ready for use.
 
Being an agency with such large responsibility they did their jobs well.  But an incident like Lahina would blindside anybody no matter how big they are.  It is a simple fact that there were certain things than hindered the ability to effectively reduce casualties and property damage but the weather didn't help one darned bit.
 
I live in a town of approximately 60,000 population.  It is my home town of which I returned to retire (not happened yet) from having been away to pursue my profession elsewhere.  I still maintain that "curmudgeon attitude."  And in this town I see numerous areas that need vast improvement with respect to warning systems.  One item that occasionally bothers me concerns the siren system the town once had.  Approximately two decades ago the city tore out all of the emergency sirens.  They were of cold war vintage and the reason made for removal was that they were too expensive to maintain.  The news made the front page as if the city was rather proud to get rid of them.  Since then no replacement system has ever been installed.  And to add to this some of the other cities in the state have expended considerable money to upgrade their siren systems.
 
We do have occasional tornadoes that come close to town at times.  On top of that the west end of town contains a very large rail yard that is constantly filled with various tank cars of hazardous materials including chlorine and such.  The winds are normally from the west so if there is a major incident it would not take much to spread any toxic chemical fumes across the whole area.
 
As for other approaches here to warning the public there is little to do with the local radio and television stations in their part to accomplish this.  Given the high use of broadcast automation systems there is a large part of each day when the stations are not manned by humans.  Television stations are somewhat different but normally do not have the capabilities to convey real-time information either.  Even television newscasts are somewhat ineffective since many of them are pre-recorded prior to broadcast.  In both instances the only relatively reliable alert conveyance is by EAS alerts providing that someone is listening to either television or radio. 
 
Cell phone warning is disjointed at best.  The obvious approach of packaged warning systems for this use (i.e. Code Red, etc.) often rely upon the user down loading an app which is purely voluntary.  There have been some "forced" alerts that shotgun the warning but that hasn't played out very well either.  And flip phones (yes many seniors use them) seem to be impervious to receipt of any alerts as well.
 
There was one instance where a field fire driven by wind was encroaching upon a housing development on the outskirts of town causing a wireline telephone alert to go out.  Unfortunately whomever issued the alert used numerous abbreviations in the descriptive text.  You can imagine how that sounded when the systems synthesized voice got to it.  It then took considerable time to reissue the warning after I contacted the dispatch center describing what had happened. 
 
Local government alerts via IPAWS do occasionally occur here.  But I have yet to see one issued from this town.  Most of them come from cities and towns hundreds of miles away.  And I occasionally find warning cancellations for warnings that were never originated.  
 
As for NWS... well... they're NWS.  Although they have become more proactive with regards to Amber alerts if it otherwise doesn't relate to weather issues, it doesn't happen.
 
While I realize that sirens systems are not a complete warning system it is obvious that they do help.  Hawaii has a good advantage in using them since much of the house construction there consists of un-insulated structures with jalousie style windows.  Outside sounds can easily travel to the indoors under these conditions.
 
So in my eyes a lot of the infrastructure of this sort of comes down to the attitudes of the local emergency services people and their views of what is or what is not a necessity.  Couple that to what can be afforded and you sort of get what you pay for.
 
There will never be a warning system that is 100% effective.  Property and lives will always be lost so it is in the best interest of all agencies to work as closely together to reach the best level of service for their communities.  This comes with the need to fight off issues such as "not needed" attitudes, protection of one's own administrative turf, "good old boy" mentalities and such and be able to approach the design and operation of systems with an open mind.
 
So that's this curmudgeon's viewpoints.
 
Greg