Hurricane season is here;
will we get hit?

Civil Defense officials urge everyone
to make preparations for disaster

Jim Witty and Joan Conrow
Star-Bulletin

Hurricane season is officially here, and there's already a storm brewing in the Pacific.

But not to worry, said National Weather Service Lead Forecaster Bob Larson. Tropical Depression 1-E is thousands of miles east of the Big Island and poses no threat to the island chain.

Scientists, weather forecasters and civil defense officials -- just about anyone who keeps a close eye on hurricanes -- can't tell you when or where a full-blown storm will bear down on Hawaii.

But eventually one will.

"I can forecast with some certainty that it's not a matter of if we're going to have another one," said Oahu Civil Defense chief Joe Reed. "It's when."

And when an Iniki-force hurricane does chug head-on into Oahu, the damage will be significant.

"We've war-gamed the Iniki scenario and adjusted it so that it turned and smacked Oahu right up the center of Pearl Harbor," Reed explained. "With the population and infrastructure density here, we used a factor of 20 to 40 times of what happened over on Kauai. We figured just by sheer numbers, we'd have mass casualties on Oahu. We're going to take it in the chin."

In the final tally, Iniki caused an estimated $2.6 billion worth of damage on Kauai. Reed predicts the cost of a major hurricane hitting Honolulu would be between $20 million and $35 billion.

Reed said Iniki was a wake-up call for emergency response agencies here.

Since the violent storm slammed into the Garden Isle on Sept. 11, 1992, Oahu Civil Defense has improved communication with small-boat owners, apartment and hotel owners and key businesses and developed hurricane contingency plans, said Reed. For example, Oahu Civil Defense has inked more than 30 agreements with major hotels to use them as shelters in the event of a hurricane.

Larson said the National Weather Service is better prepared as well.

More satellite coverage of the Central Pacific, more hurricane models and more radar capability add up to an improvement in the Weather Service's ability to forecast and track major storms, he said.

Even so, the human factor has Reed concerned.

"It's been some five years now since Iniki hit Kauai," Reed noted. "The awareness or concern level of the average citizen is on the wane now. Every year we have to come out waving the flag. Be prepared. I believe very few people have a hurricane kit ready for this year."

And, said Reed, very few people on Oahu have ever felt the brunt of a major category 3 or 4 hurricane.

Hannah Merit, who rents an old home near Kekaha, Kauai, has. And she plans to be ready should it happen again.

Merit prepares now by storing sheets of plywood under the house. They're cut to fit her windows, so she can quickly nail them up if the island goes on a hurricane alert.

"I got a lot of broken windows in Iniki from stuff flying around," Merit said. "That won't happen the next time, hopefully. And I'd bring my screens in too. You don't think about that until they get all ripped up by debris and there's no way to stop the mosquitoes from pouring in."

Claudia Woolson-Cohn wasn't on Kauai when Iniki hit. But she kept its destruction in mind when she built a bluff-top home this year on the island's windswept north shore. She directed her contractor to design it for high wind loads and chose concrete pillars, a stucco exterior and a heavy tile roof. Work crews dubbed it "the Alamo."

While meteorologists are reluctant to predict the severity of this hurricane season, they do acknowledge that another weather-disrupting El Nino current may be brewing. If so, that could result in more storms in the vicinity of Hawaii because hurricanes draw strength from the warm waters engendered by El Nino.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Weyman said the condition could increase the number of storms here, but added that it is difficult to predict the extent of its effect. He noted there were 11 hurricanes in the region in 1994, an El Nino year, but all passed south of the islands.

In the event of a hurricane, Oahu Civil Defense offers 24-hour-a-day updates at 527-5372. In addition, the Federal Emergency Management Agency maintains a storm watch Web page at http://www.fema.gov.

Hurricane season runs from now through November.