The City and County of Honolulu budget this year includes $18 million for resilience hubs to shelter residents during natural disasters, and city lawmakers want to make sure it’s properly built and equipped to handle severe weather.
A Honolulu City Council resolution would request the city administration to come up with minimum standards for the resilience hubs, which are community shelters meant to have space, electricity and emergency supplies available to nearby residents during heavy storms and other natural disasters.
The measure said that, according to reporting from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, city and state officials could not confirm that any of the shelters on the island could withstand hurricanes stronger than Category 1 — the weakest classification on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale.
Councilmembers Esther Kiaʻāina and Matt Weyer co-introduced the measure. Kiaʻāina spoke about it briefly at a council hearing Tuesday.
“We all know that we need to have resiliency hubs in our respective districts. I think it's very important that we have minimum standards so that we do it the right way,” Kiaʻāina said. “And I just think that building up and strengthening and hardening our resiliency hubs is going to have to be a critical component.”
Some of the standards for resilience hubs could include siting them outside of tsunami evacuation zones and flood hazard areas and ensuring they have solar-based electricity, refrigeration and proper ventilation.
