Strong isle storm
would be crippling

Preparing for a Katrina-like
event is an ongoing process

If a Category 4 hurricane like Hurricane Katrina made a direct hit on Honolulu, chances are that 100,000 people would be homeless.

Roads would be littered with debris. Water, sewer and electric service would be nil at first -- and perhaps for weeks or months.

Downed communication towers could leave gaps in fire and police radio coverage.

The airport and Honolulu Harbor could both be damaged and unable to handle ships or planes for several days.

"The last four or five days, people have seen the events of Hurricane Katrina and it's been an awakening," said Ed Teixeira, who as vice director of state Civil Defense is the hub of the state's emergency preparedness network.

"They're asking, 'Are we ready? Are we prepared?'" he said. "Yes, we're prepared, but we're still preparing."

Teixeira admits that the last two statewide hurricane preparedness drills assumed a Category 3 storm, rather than a worst-case Category 4 or Category 5.

Iniki was about a Category 3 when it hit Kauai 13 years ago today, causing $2.5 billion in damage, destroying 1,421 homes and damaging 10 times that many.

"You try to prepare for the worst-case scenario, but you never know what the worst-case scenario is," said Rod Haraga, state Department of Transportation director.

"Usually hurricanes in Central North Pacific are not as strong as in the Atlantic or Western North Pacific," said Pao-Shin Chu, Hawaii's state climatologist. "Usually we have Category 1 or 2 hurricanes."

But in 1994, two years after Iniki, three Category 5 hurricanes passed to the south of Hawaii, Chu said.

Maj. Gen. Robert Lee, the state adjutant general and director of state Civil Defense, said that despite having more than half of the Hawaii's National Guard troops deployed to the Middle East and Hawaii's isolation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the state is prepared to respond to a catastrophe.

"We're fortunate that we have a large military force we can count on, proportionately, much better than most states," he said. "We can also get instant decisions because all (military) headquarters are here. All the bosses are here."

Tomorrow at 10 a.m. at the state Capitol, lawmakers will hear from Civil Defense, the National Weather Service and the Hawaii Tourism Authority about hurricane preparedness and whether there is anything they can do to help.

They'll hear that since Iniki in 1992:

"No state can really handle a major, major hurricane by itself," he added.

Just last year, largely because of concern after the tsunami in Southeast Asia, state Civil Defense got $4 million to upgrade schools to provide about 18,000 more shelter spaces.

When completed, that work still will leave the state about 100,000 spaces short of its goal to be able to temporarily house 462,000 of the state's 1.2 million residents. Retrofits to reach that goal would cost about $35 million, Teixeira said.

Lawmakers will also probably hear the obvious, that Hawaii is not below sea-level like New Orleans. But the state does have miles of coastline, much of it heavily populated. Many of the state's major highways and all of its airports and ports are immediately on the coast.

Still, even if a hurricane hit multiple islands, the state has at least two deep draft harbors on each main island, Haraga said.

Gov. Linda Lingle said Hawaii's isolation means the state must be self-reliant, especially in the first few days of a disaster.

"The bottom-line message is people need to do their part, and I think Katrina and Iwa and Iniki point out the fact that it could happen here," Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann said Friday as he pledged to repair the city's aging communications towers over the next four years at a cost of $25 million.

"Hurricane Katrina is a grim reminder of the importance of preparedness," Hannemann said. "So let's be ready for it and let's not wait till that day comes and then say, 'What can I do now?'"

Those who work directly in disaster management hesitate to publicly criticize things that seem to be going wrong with the Katrina aftermath. Those one step removed are more blunt.

"The Louisiana responses are not very good," climatologist Chu said. "It seems to me they've done a very poor job. We should learn from them."

Despite the looting and lawlessness depicted in New Orleans after Katrina, "in a time of disaster, most people are innately good and want to help," said Chiyome Fukino, director of the state Department of Health.

"We saw it work with Iniki, when people banded together," Fukino recalled. Police, fire and medical workers from the rest of the state volunteered for months to pull shifts on Kauai.

When Hawaii's next disaster strikes, Fukino said: "Common, average people on the street will do what they can. We're going to rely rather heavily on the aloha spirit of community to do just that."