Emergency plans executed on neighbor islands

Due to the short amount of time to heed the warning, county officials on the neighbor islands were pleased with how well it was executed and followed to ensure public safety.

With a lead time of less than four hours, emergency plans immediately went into effect with sirens blaring, people evacuated and traffic diverted.

"For the time period that we had to work for the Maui County and pretty much the state almost everything ran pretty smoothly," said Mayor Alan Arakawa.
But not everything went according to plan. Eight sirens in areas like Puna and Hilo on the Big Island did not go off. To compensate first responders on the scene alerted residents.

"We sent in our police officers to do manual notifications of course we sent up our fire department three helicopters went up to make sure that we visually notified all shoreline coastline areas and hard to reach areas," said Mayor Billy Kenoi.
Kauai also had a siren malfunction.

"There may have been one siren that didn’t sound we did have an ongoing challenge of finding folks getting out on the roadways when they don’t really need to," said Beth Tokioka, Kauai County. "We did actually have to close a couple of gas stations because we had people lining up to get gas and that was causing more of a traffic jam."

Mayor Arakawa had to coordinate with his county officials while stuck in a Waikiki hotel room.

"I don’t feel there was any shortage of communication that was left out of everything but at the same time its really gratifying to see how smooth everything ran with the rest of the team intact," said Mayor Arakawa.

But, officials say there is still room for improvement.

"One of the suggestions that has come up is putting video cameras in our harbor areas to be able to monitor the shoreline," said Mayor Arakawa.

County mayors plan to meet on Monday and throughout the week with their departments to assess how things were done and can be improved for the next event.