Flood warning
was false alarm

The TV message, sent via a
national system, was meant
for Hawaii as a high-surf alert

Some Oahu residents were alarmed after a coastal flooding warning -- meant to warn them about high surf -- was posted on a cable channel last weekend.

"It's kind of unfortunate that this happened," said Ray Lovell, spokesman for the state Civil Defense. "The timing on this without people knowing what that means, it might have frightened them because of the Indian Ocean tsunami."

Several calls were made to Oceanic Time Warner Cable on Oahu and to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on Sunday about the coastal-flooding warning that appeared in large letters on TV screens tuned to Channel 16 that night.

Officials said there is no warning for high surf in an automated national alert system now in use by the National Weather Service.

"(Coastal flooding) was the closest to come to it," Lovell said.

Officials with the National Weather Service, state Civil Defense and Oceanic are discussing ways to educate the public about what the coastal-flooding warning means for Hawaii residents. And they are trying to find a way to translate the warning to television stations so it is posted as a high-surf warning.

In the meantime, "the only way that a coastal-flood warning would be used in Hawaii would be for a high-surf warning," Lovell said. "Storm surges from hurricanes or tropical storms would be under hurricane or tropical-storm warnings."

In November the National Weather Service started to use the Emergency Alert System to issue high-surf warnings through the coastal-flooding code, said Nezette Rydell, warning coordination meteorologist.

"The state wanted the Emergency Alert System to be triggered for high-surf warnings," Rydell said. "Our way to do that is to use the CFW (Coastal Flooding Warning) code."

Eric Uyeda, Oahu's playback operations manager at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, said their automated system is pre- programmed to broadcast warnings from the National Weather Service.

On Sunday night a weather bulletin scrolled across the screen on cable channels directing viewers to turn to Channel 16 for details. On that channel a coastal-flooding warning for Oahu and Kauai was posted.

Uyeda said the system worked, but the message was not changed to be posted as a high-surf warning. Officials now want to figure out how to make that change when they receive automated coastal-flooding advisories from the National Weather Service.

"We are working with the state, the cable company, the television stations on what kind of educational and operational issues need to be addressed," Rydell said.