Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Hawaiian officials tally damage
By Tracy Chan & Ting-Cheng Wen
Ka Leo O Hawaii (U. Hawaii)
10/19/2006

(U-WIRE) HONOLULU — Major General Robert Lee, local civic leaders and members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency held a press conference yesterday at 3:30 p.m. in the state Civil Defense headquarters to discuss the extent of the damage caused by Sunday's earthquake.

Michael Karl, appointed by President Bush yesterday to be the FEMA federal coordinating officer, was one of the speakers, as were State Director of Transportation Rod Haraga, tourism liaison Marsha Wienert, and Sandra Kunimoto, the Chair of the Board of Agriculture.

According to Lee, 29 homes had been seriously damaged and were made unlivable, 1130 were partially damaged, and 14 had only minor structural damages, which added up to a total of 1173 affected houses. Most of them were on the Big Island. Lee said that the Big Island, which took the most damage, remains the main focus of a joint federal and local emergency assistance effort.

Karl commented that the loss of public structures and damages caused to public property by the blackout will be funded by the federal government, but damages sustained by individuals and businesses will not. Haraga said that currently the damage to highways is about $20 million.

What might be surprising to some is that news of the earthquake traveled fast, but did not really affect island tourism. According to Wienert, there were no abnormalities in cancelled reservations by tourists, even though her department sent out an international news release about the earthquake by mid-afternoon on Sunday. She said there were only 100 cancellations statewide on Monday. However, she mentioned rental cars being damaged by landslides on Maui and many cancelled flights that left both local travelers and tourists stranded for hours. The lack of communication and the backed up flights left many angry.

Haraga said airlines were not informed of the loss of electricity because the airports did not have enough power to function fully. This resulted in airplanes not being checked properly before takeoff, and necessitating other manual procedures which would normally take much less time.

In answer to why the Emergency Broadcast System wasn't used, Lee replied, "We didn't want to cause confusion." He also said that if people didn't have power, they would not have gotten the message anyway. Lee said that the governor had declared a state of emergency so soon in order to get permission to inspect for damages, and to allow National Guard troops to help recovery and take advantage of what aid FEMA could offer.

Lee admitted, though, that there had been a definite breakdown in communication.

"We agree that many areas of communication can be improved," said Lee. "With modern technology... we can communicate to the public through the media, or directly to the public, whatever it takes to get to the word out — that is the bottom line."

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