After doin a 12 hour volunteer at one of the shelters here, i have to say hawaii is not ready for a hurricane, nothing was in place for any aftermath if we was to be hit, really sad,i under stand ppl need to bring their supply, but i seen kids and pregnant women sleeping on the floor, they should have laid down the gym mattes, alot of listened learn here, big eye opener for me
It actually would be nice if the shelters were stocked with food/water and that they were comfortable. But the point of the shelters is emergency shelter, and emergency shelter alone. The intent of the shelter is to provide a safer place to keep you alive while the storm passes. The state makes this clear. If you want a matress or futon to sleep on, you need to bring it yourself.The state does not have the resources allocated to do what you're suggesting.
In the future, if there's funding allocated towards it, the state could keep supplies stationed at every major shelter (schools) for
post hurricane relief efforts. It would help relieve immediately after the storm, as the people most likely to use the shelters tend to be poorer or homeless.
I was pretty impressed with many preparations for response post event that I noticed or heard about. One was the staging of vehicles and equipment in the H3 tunnel and appearing to be ready to go. Another was the preparations and coordination of the National guard and support from “Title 10” elements.
I’m now more concerned that folks will take future events lightly considering this near miss where nothing much happened for most of Oahu.
While this wasn’t a test of disaster response, I think many learned about their preps and individual situations.
One thing I've found encouraging is that nowadays, after major disasters or disaster misses like this one, planners are looking at what went wrong, and try ti incorporate fixes in procedure for the future. Hawaii itself has not gotten hit by a major hurricane since iniki, but they're using lessons learned from puerto rico and other hurricanes to better hawaii's preparedness. The strategy of staging of equipment closer to anticipated need and ready to go and closer coordination between agencies has come about as a result of hard lessons learned from other hurricanes that hit the east coast.
Without coordination, you can have a lot of fucked up things happening... like if a critical road to the airport needed to be cleared, you have county, state, and national guard personnel showing up on site, but noone thought to bring the dozer because they thought the other party was going to take care of it. Or you get 5 backhoes sent to the location, but no way to keep them fueled. The fuel trucks are still sitting in a yard still blocked by debris across the island.
The reason they implemented the 2 weeks of food, water, and supplies last year was in direct response from experiences form other states that have gone through similar disasters. The better supplied residents are, the more disaster workers can focus on restoring critical infrastructure; restoring the ports, airports, main roads, and power, instead of worrying how to keep people from starving and dying of dehydration immediately after the storm hits.