Ketchup and M&Ms — that’ll be our survival diet within a couple of days of a Category 3 hurricane hitting Oahu’s south shore. So says David Lopez, the executive officer of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HIEMA).
Much of our power supply would be down, so we couldn’t pump water. All four runways at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport would likely be out — and take at least 12 days to reopen. The port of Honolulu would probably be knocked out for weeks, if not months. No other port is capable of handling the volume of goods the gigantic ocean-going containerships bring to our islands.
Much of this is detailed in a critical systems report by HIEMA, released more than four years ago.
So: The storm hits Honolulu and bang goes the infrastructure through which we import the 90% of our food that isn’t produced locally.
Don’t count on the feds to save us: FEMA has enough emergency rations to feed a single meal to each Hawaii resident — our last supper.
If the feds could muster as big a relief effort as they managed in Puerto Rico after it was decimated by Hurricane Maria, we’d have enough food to give every Hawaii resident one meal every three days — and we’re twice as far from the mainland as P.R.
When people can’t feed their children, they do desperate things. Senior officials anticipate disorder and violence.
Oh yes, our elected leaders are fully aware of this threat. And they have a plan: You, dear reader, are on your own. That’s the plan. To be clear, the official state policy is that you, me and every man, woman and child in Hawaii has a two-week supply of food and water at home at all times, to help us survive the early stages of disaster.
What? You don’t have a two-week supply of food and water at home?
Local officials, again, wouldn’t be surprised. Their best estimate is that just 5-10% of Hawaii residents are fully stocked and prepared.
Worse: The hurricane threat is growing. Like vampires drawn to a warm vein, hurricanes are drawn to warm water, from which they suck energy. The ocean around Hawaii warms a little more each year thanks to global heating, so the annual hurricane storm track moves inexorably closer to our islands. And that extra heat in the water makes the storms ever-more violent.
A hit from one of these monsters is not a question of if, but when.
There’s plenty we could do to avoid the worst: build food storage facilities far from the inundation zone, incentivize distributors to stock larger inventories. But a foundational policy has to be growing a lot more of the food that we eat.
Our pitiful disaster preparedness is just one of many pressing social and ecological issues generated by the food system.
“The current approach to food, nutrition, agriculture and the environment is unsustainable,” warns the InterAcademy Partnership of 130 national academies of science and medicine across the world. “Global food systems are failing humanity and accelerating climate change.”
Transforming the food system is essential to improving human and planetary health — Hawaii should be the poster child.
The problem is Hawaii doesn’t have a plan to guide the changes in food and agriculture we desperately need to confront the growing challenges of disaster preparedness, climate change, food security, public health and economic development.
Rhetorically we’re committed to achieving a slew of sustainability goals. But we have neither a map nor vehicle to get us there.
We need a plan and we needed it yesterday.
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On air:
The new documentary, “Ketchup and M&M’s,” will premiere on KFVE on May 17, 7-9 p.m.; it also will be live- streamed on Hawaii News Now digital platforms.
Anthony Aalto is producer of Green Island Films, LLC.
