Oʻahu residents have a new online tool to help them prepare for a wildfire or dam failure. Honolulu authorities unveiled the Oʻahu Hazard Explorer at a news conference on Tuesday, which included a demonstration of how it shows specific disaster risks for any location on the island.
To use it, residents type an address or drop a pin on a map at the website honolulu.gov/myhazards. The site says whether the location falls inside a tsunami or dam evacuation zone, and indicates its level of flood and wildfire risk.
Having a tool like this would have helped last year when a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off Russia and triggered Pacific-wide tsunami warnings, said Jennifer Walter, the deputy director of Honolulu’s Department of Emergency Management.
Many people on Oʻahu unnecessarily evacuated because they weren’t sure whether they needed to move to higher ground. Traffic clogged Waikīkī and Downtown Honolulu streets as thousands of people all tried to get to safety at the same time.
“There's some value to this — whether you're a family trying to make a family disaster plan, or you're a parent who wants to understand what risks your child's school might face, or you’re a parent who's caregiving for a family member and want to understand their home,” Walter said at the news conference.
The information was available online before, but residents had to go to four different websites to find it.
The new site offers guidance that’s easier for people to understand. For example, it makes clear when addresses fall outside tsunami evacuation zones and residents there wouldn’t need to flee.
“You would simply be given ʻFlood Zone X,’ and you don't know what to do with that information,” said Molly Pierce, a spokesperson for the Honolulu Department of Emergency Management, at the news conference. “And so what we've done is we've gone through and we've included information of what it means and what we should potentially do in those scenarios in really simple language.”
The city had the idea for the website before last year’s tsunami warning, but the event made developing it more urgent, Walter said.
The website doesn’t have live weather or tsunami data so it won’t have the latest alerts from the city when an emergency is underway. Instead, it’s designed to be used before disaster strikes to help residents better understand risks and prepare. Residents can get up-to-date information in emergencies by signing up for text notifications at HNLAlerts.gov or visiting that same website.
