Posts

Showing posts from August, 2023

What about Hawaii's warning sirens?

  What about Hawaii's warning sirens?  Hawaii has a statewide outdoor warning siren system, which can be used to notify residents ahead of natural disasters or human-caused events, including tsunamis , hurricanes, dam breaches, flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, terrorist threats and hazardous material incidents, according to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.   But U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda, whose district includes Maui, said Sunday on "Face the Nation" that the warning sirens "likely did not go off." Maui's fire chief later confirmed to CBS News' Jonathan Vigliotti that the sirens did not go off. "Everybody who has ever lived in Hawaii knows the warning sirens. It goes off once a month, every month, at 12 noon and it blares. And if it doesn't, it gets fixed because that is our first line of defense," Tokuda said. "Sadly, tragically, in this situation, those sirens likely did not go off," said the congresswoman. She also s...

The public is trained to seek higher ground in the event that the sirens are sounded,

  The public is trained to seek higher ground in the event that the sirens are sounded, " Andaya said, noting that the sirens are generally used to warn of tsunamis or approaching storms.   "Had we sounded the sirens that night, we were afraid that people would have gone mauka (mountainside), and if that was the case, they would have gone into the fire," Andaya said. "So that is the reason why, it is our protocol, to use WEA [Wireless Emergency Alerts] and EAS [the Emergency Alert System]." Andaya explained that the agency's "internal protocol" for wildfires is to use both WEA — text alerts sent to cell phones — and the EAS, which are alerts sent to television and radio.  "In a wildland fire incident , the (siren) system has not been used, either in Maui or in other jurisdictions around the state," Andaya said. However, with power knocked out in the area and no television or radio, residents reported receiving no text alerts or televisio...