Remembering all that was lost in last year’s Maui wildfires is also a reminder of the communications blackout — when fiber optic lines were destroyed and critical systems, including wireless cell service, failed.
Su Shin, the president of Hawaiian Telcom, said that while the main office in Lahaina was spared in the fire, over 35 miles of cables were not and required replacement to restore power in the area.
She said one goal for Hawaiian Telcom right now is to integrate resiliency into their networks.
"We are always thinking about, 'How do we make our networks more resilient?' Not just because of climate change and the impacts of climate change, like what we saw with the Maui wildfires. I mean, we're seeing them again, right? We just had fires on Maui, fires on Kauaʻi — so we cannot ever stop thinking about things like that," Shin said.
"So that sort of gets ingrained into our DNA, and so we've built a lot of this resiliency planning into our day-to-day thinking, planning and operations. And so that continues for us, for our teams, and really statewide. It's not just a Maui thing," she continued.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Aug. 9, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
