Newsmaker
Monday, November 3, 1997
Name: Joseph Reed
Age: 65
Education: History, Chaplain College; master's, Central Michigan University
Hobbies: golf, history and raising a teen-age daughter
When Oahu residents were startled awake by the sound of wailing sirens on the morning of Sept. 10, 1992, Joseph Reed had been up throughout the night watching the tempest Iniki swirling its way toward Oahu. Planning for public safety
Iniki shifted its direction, and it became apparent to Reed the Category 3 hurricane was going to strike.
Civil Defense carried out the city's first hurricane evacuation plan, a plan Reed authored shortly after joining Civil Defense in 1983 as a hurricane planner -- a plan that rousted some 40,000 residents along the Waianae Coast from their sleep at 5 a.m., taking those in danger to safety.
For his work with the Oahu Civil Defense, Reed was awarded the Excellence in Emergency Management last month from the National Weather Service. He was one of 17 administrators receiving the newly established national award.
The award honors civil-defense administrators with emergency management programs that best prepare local communities for mobilization in the face of natural hazards.
"When we wrote the plan, we were told by mainland experts to plan for a category 1 or 2 hurricane. But here we had a category 3 bordering 4 on its way," Reed said. "Our plan worked well in most areas, but we needed to improve in others."
Reed and his team modified the existing evacuation plan to take into account the storm surge and wind damage associated with hurricanes of Iniki's magnitude, something they hadn't really considered before. Iniki caused them to reassess the stability of current shelters and to suggest city planners build new schools bearing in mind they may one day serve as evacuation shelters.
"In almost every situation that comes along, you learn a little bit more," Reed said.
Some of the major emergencies Reed has monitored include the News Year's flood of 1988, Hurricane Iniki in 1992 and the tsunami evacuations of 1986 and 1994.
Veronica Fajardo, Star-Bulletin
