KAUAI has been hit by three hurricanes since 1959. Each one was worse than its predecessor. In each one federal-state-county civil defense communication was a major shortcoming. Iwa in 1982 and Iniki in 1992 occurred in years of El Nino weather patterns. These seem to put Hawaii at its greatest risk -- not just Kauai, but all our islands. Kauai’s preparations
for more hurricanesThis is another El Nino year. "Are you ready?" I asked Mayor Maryanne W. Kusaka recently. Much better than ever before, she said. I hope other county mayors can say the same.
In Iniki, then-Mayor JoAnn Yukimura endured a near-total communication breakdown once the storm hit. A key antenna connecting emergency agencies was demolished. All Kauai radio stations were knocked off the air. There was no plan for emergency information dissemination under such circumstances. Still worse, her only full-time communications assistant was ill.
From her command post in the basement of the county building in Lihue, Yukimura used her secretary's 11-year-old son and her own bicycle to maintain contact with other county agencies only a few blocks away. Residents with transistor radios began to run out of batteries to listen to Honolulu radio stations.
Yukimura said later her communication capacity was down to that of a Third World country. She had no contact at all with the western part of her island. Residents there felt isolated and abandoned, a factor in her failure to win re-election in 1994.
Improvements since Iniki include a "hardened" communications system with cellular phones as an add-on, strategically placed generators brought in after Iniki and still in use, designated shelters for all residents who may need them, and a plan for the mayor to visit all parts of the island by helicopter after a storm passes.
Visitors will be evacuated off island before any storm, if feasible, and at least moved to hardened shelters near the now-expanded airport for orderly departures.
Five sirens have been added since 1992. Building code requirements have been toughened. Civil defense agencies drill together periodically, most recently in May. An island disaster handbook is reissued annually.
Kusaka has an attractive new office in a different building for everyday work but still must retreat in crisis to the same tight-spaced basement emergency shelter used by Yukimura. The mayor's present and former administrative assistants will be with her, along with county Civil Defense Director Cayetano "Sonny" Gerardo and his key task force leaders for energy, water, transportation and more.
A corps of volunteer runners will mobilize. Cooperation and communication with federal and state agencies will be good, she is sure, something not fully true before.
The basement shelter has 12 bunk beds. It will count on the Red Cross for food and water. A more spacious command center is sought but not funded.
Kauai still is not fully recovered from Iniki, but unemployment at last has dropped below 10 percent. The Waiohai and Coco Palms resorts have no rebuilding plans but Sheraton at Poipu will reopen soon. The rest of the Kauai visitor plant, still the backbone of the economy, is restored and had 82 percent occupancy in August, the highest of any county.
The desolate look of trees and shrubs stripped of greenery began to disappear within months of the 1992 storm. The blue tarpaulins on damaged rooftops were removed more slowly, as was debris. Rebuilding destroyed structures came more slowly still, but Kauai looks great today.