Almost a year after a tsunami threat spurred a mass evacuation of downtown Honolulu, the city’s Department of Emergency Management has evaluated its response in a new after action report.
DEM Deputy Director Jennifer Walter said that the tsunami evacuation last July was successful — even if it may not have felt that way to the people stuck in traffic.
“As frustrating as it was … ultimately, we got people out of harm's way within a very short amount of time at a very busy time of day,” Walter told HPR.
Emergency managers started mobilizing as soon as the 8.8 earthquake off the eastern coast of Russia triggered a tsunami watch for the Hawaiian Islands. By the time the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a formal warning that tsunami waves were on their way, Oʻahu’s Emergency Operations Center was fully activated.
While the report commends that quick mobilization, it also notes that emergency staff needed better guidelines on what exactly to do during a tsunami event.
Walter said that there were several new faces at the department when the tsunami occurred.
“And when I say new, I mean, they could probably tell you what day of service they were on,” she said. “So some of those knowledge gaps revealed themselves, particularly where we realized we rely heavily on institutional knowledge.”
The report recommends that the department add more tsunami-specific protocols to its City Emergency Operations Plan and provide additional training to staff.
Additionally, the department’s small staff was worn thin trying to support 24-7 operations. Walter said at the time, the department had just 15 and a half positions.
“Any emergency management agency in the country, when they have a really big event, relies on mutual aid, help from outside… But I think the smallness of our staff was particularly exposed by a tsunami incident because you have to activate so rapidly and there's really not a lot of time to make those kind of emergency assignments or to bring in mutual aid,” she said.
Since the tsunami event, the department has worked to staff up. It has received funding to add 13 new positions over the course of next year. It is also building up a reserve of people with emergency response training who can spring into action when the next disaster occurs.
The report also flags a general confusion among members of the public about whether they were in an at-risk zone. Many evacuated by car when they didn’t need to, leading to traffic jams on key roads. According to the report, 92% of the trips people made in cars during last year's evacuation were unnecessary.
“There were people on the road that didn't need to move basically,” Walter said.
The department is working to better inform the public about tsunami evacuation zones and other hazards. It recently launched the Oʻahu Hazard Explorer, which explains hazard exposures for specific local addresses.
Taking steps to understand that exposure before an event occurs is crucial, said Walter — especially if an evacuation was called in response to a locally-generated tsunami.
“We would have less than 30 minutes … The need for people to really understand where they are and where they could go is really important in that scenario,” Walter said.
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