Reading about the recent devastation by hurricanes in the Gulf and Caribbean makes us wonder if anyone in Hawaii is really cognizant of how destructive a hurricane anywhere in this state could be — and especially on Oahu, the most populated island.
We lived on Guam (and the Philippines) for more than 20 years and we got directly hit by typhoons (same as hurricanes) so many times we lost count. That is the only thing we do not miss about Guam: preparing for and then actually getting direct hits by the typhoons, year after year.
One year we got direct hits from three typhoons in two months. The housing throughout Hawaii is mostly a joke for typhoon or hurricane preparedness, since most single-family homes are made of flimsy wooden materials.
On Guam, most people have invested in concrete homes, with concrete roofs, as those are the only ones to withstand hurricane/typhoons winds. They have to. The Micronesians (or anyone else) still living in the boonies or in tin and wood huts have to go to the school shelters.
Most places in Hawaii do not have “typhoon shutters.” Most stores, and residences, do not have generators to run refrigerators or freezers.
On Guam, all the stores, even the little stores, have generators so they don’t lose their costly inventory after a typhoon. Everyone there does water collection before the typhoon for drinking and cooking, and we had a water catchment system for rainwater just to flush the toilets after the storms.
Most people do not have any way to store water or water catchment systems in Hawaii. Really relevant planning for hurricanes is hard to do in apartment buildings or condos or hotels.
The sheer numbers of people who would be affected by a direct hurricane/typhoon hit on Oahu just boggles the mind (millions, like in Puerto Rico). Guam is a small island and everyone there is used to dealing with typhoons every year, so they know how to prepare.
If you think what you are reading about in Puerto Rico is bad, just try and imagine life in an apartment without any running water for a minimum of two weeks or no electricity for a minimum of eight weeks, as has happened to us on Guam.
Climate change is changing the pattern of typhoons in the Asia-Pacific region and hurricanes in the Caribbean. The typhoons may be shifting northwards from the equator in the Asian-Western Pacific region — from hitting Guam or the Philippines, toward the Asian continent and Taiwan — while it seems the Gulf and the Caribbean are getting hit more frequently.
We do not know what could happen here in the mid-Pacific, but it is better to be prepared and safe than sorry.
People in condos and apartments and hotels should really think about this, since I doubt anyone — including “the government” — has any real plans to address these kinds of disasters and contingencies for Hawaii’s 1.2 million residents and the millions of tourists.
Ann Pobutsky is a state sociologist, and Enrico Neri is a plant pathologist and rural sociologist; both have worked in Guam and contributed to public education materials on typhoon preparedness.
