House Standing Committee on Public Safety

Calling to order this Committee on Public Safety Today is Thursday August 28, 2025, 2:00pm State Capitol Conference Room 325. Welcome to our presenters to Members of the public as well as public members who are viewing on YouTube.

Today's informational briefing is to provide the Committee with an overview of the hazard mitigation planning process engaged in by county and state emergency management agencies and an after action report regarding recent tsunami and wildfire threats from the Department of Transportation and HIEMA and how lessons learned from these recent events will inform future emergency management responses and mitigation plans.

By way of context or by way of introduction, My name is Della Belatti. I'm the chair of the House on the Committee on Public Safety. I represent Makiki Tantalus, Papakolea Punchbowl, the urban Honolulu areas of town. Representative, do you care to introduce yourself?

Hello everyone. I'm Representative Garner Shimizu, State Representative, District 32, which so runs roughly from Fort Shafter to Pearl Ridge. And I just learned that I have some very important warehouses in my Halawa district.

So yes, we had a very educational site visits today at some of the key warehouses that service actually not just Hawaii, but all parts of the Pacific and really is part of a network of national emergency supplies that we depend on. Let me start this briefing by just commenting on a few things.

We are celebrating the second anniversary of the Lahaina wildfires and I learned recently and I believe I think I'm getting it right, we are and I'm going to look at Ed. We are celebrating also the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina coming up. We have had a very active wildfire season as I speak.

There might even be wildfires right now that are being fought in our communities, Kunia being most recent. But even shortly after the end of the legislative session this year we saw a fire on the slopes of Punchbowl in my backyard.

So there is no place immune, no island that is immune from the threats of wildfires and all these hazards that we're going to talk about. I want to thank our presenters. We're going to start off first with Talmadge Magno who is a very accomplished, a very reliable and expert administrator from Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency.

He's going to talk to us about the multi hazard mitigation planning process that the County of Hawaii has recently just, I think gone through.

The reason for us to start with the mitigation planning process and then move towards more after action reports from recent threats that we've experienced is because the process of disaster management, from mitigation, prevention, planning, response, recovery, and it's a process that's iterative. We are constantly learning.

And the whole planning process is about us continuing to identify threats and assessing those threats and then discovering ways in which. And making sure that we're prioritizing and addressing these threats in a systematic manner. So this is not just something that we engage in from threat to threat. It's actually something that we can plan for.

And I'm a big believer in planning. We have so much we need to do, and we always can be learning. The plans can always be improving. So that's the kind of context for today. And I'm going to welcome my colleague. If you can introduce yourself.

Aloha, Rep Perruso, House District 46.

Okay, so we're going to start off.

I'll hand it over to you. Talmadge, you've got the floor.

Good afternoon, Representatives, Ed and guests in the audience. So thank you for the opportunity and great lead in Representative Belatti, because as I present. And I'll start with the high level, you know, with. Because a lot of this has come from- from FEMA.

And so I kind of start with that level and then break it down into where we get at the local level, the state and the county levels. You point out the previous occurrences of disasters that we have had.

This year marks the 50th year of the Puna Coast earthquake, which generated a local tsunami, our last local tsunami that killed two people in the national park on Hawaii Island. That's always a threat that we have with us in Maui and our entire state. But so remembering and planning according to lessons learned is always a big thing.

And then you see that FEMA has thought about this from a long time ago, from when the Stanford act was created back in the 70s. So I'll share my screen and then we'll get going.

Are we able to manage it in the zoom? You sharing your screen?

Okay, I gotta confirm that you guys are seeing this.

We're not seeing it, but you should be able to share from your screen. Oh, here we go. There we go. We see it.

All right, get to the right. Okay, so we're in a slideshow right now?

Yes.

Okay, perfect. So, as I said, the hazard mitigation process started before the Stafford Act. It was under some different name and under the Federal Government, recognizing that the Federal Government had to organize.

And many programs came out of it that were subsequently pushed out to the states, local governments, you know, the tribal units to help them to deal with disasters that we especially the recurring disasters. Let me back up. I kind of got ahead of myself. So I'm Talmadge Magno, I'm the Civil Defense Administrator for Hawaii County.

I've been here about nine years, been through several big disasters and subsequently I was exposed to a lot of the public assistance, individual assistance and the hazardous mitigation process that the, that the Federal Government has developed for us.

So the hazard mitigation grant funding provides funding for all of the entities that choose to partake in the hazard mitigation plan. So it's a 75/25 split and the counties and the state will usually go and procure a vendor that will put together these, these documents. They are good for five years.

So you know, I believe state emergency management, city and county and Hawaii county are pretty much on the same time frame. So we, we've all gone through it within this, this past year and, and we just got ours approved by FEMA.

So you'll see that this document, this, this multi hazard mitigation plan has a lot of bearings on what goes forward as far as mitigating our hazards. So I gotta apologize up front for all the writing because you know, that's basically what it is. It's legislation that has been developed and tweaked and continues on.

And I'll just read from the slide here. So hazard mitigation planning reduces loss of life and property by minimizing the impact of disasters. It begins with state, tribal and local governments identifying natural disaster risks and vulnerabilities that are common in their area. So pretty much statewide we have a lot of commonality.

Oahu by its nature, of its dense population and population has significant differences from the other counties and Hawaii County, we've got our own with the volcanoes and so forth. So you know, pretty much the same, but differences. So after identifying these risks, they develop long term strategies for protecting people and property from these similar events.

Mitigation plans are key to breaking the cycle of disaster, damage and losses, kind of like what you led into. So key to the hazard mitigation plan is that it's a requirement if you are going to receive federal disaster funds.

You need to be, you need to have this document, it needs to be updated, it needs to be active. So one of the programs that, that provides assistance through this, this hazard mitigation is flood mitigation assistance.

These funds are used for projects that reduce or eliminate the risk of repetitive flood damage to buildings insured by the National Flood Insurance Program which the state participates in. So we do have flood zones. Those people have should have the proper insurance and this should cover them.

A second, flood mitigation assistance refers to swift current, which is swift- the swift current effort provides funding to mitigate buildings insured through the National Flood Insurance Program after a major disaster declaration following a flood related disaster event to reduce risk against future flood damage.

So mitigation- mitigation efforts for whatever cause of flooding, whether it's channels failing or cleaning up drainages and so forth, so whatever the local government, state government can come up with that mitigates flooding, this funding would apply. So another one, you're talking about fires.

Well as the grant program, post fire wildfires can destroy homes, businesses, infrastructure, natural resources and agriculture. They can also increase secondary hazards and leave areas prone to floods, erosion and mud flows for many years. FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant program has post fire assistance available to help communities implement hazard mitigation measures after wildfire disasters.

And the Pre Disaster Mitigation, PDM Grant program makes federal funds available to state, local, tribal and territorial governments to plan for and implement sustainable cost effective measures designed to reduce the risk to individuals and property from future natural hazards while also reducing reliance on federal funding from future disasters.

The program is authorized under by Section 203 of the Stafford Act. This is another one, Safeguarding Tomorrow Revolving Loan Fund Program.

I have not had experience with this, but it's a loan program authorized under Section 205 of the Stafford Act to provide capitalization grants to states and eligible federal recognized tribes, territories and the District of Columbia to establish revolving loan funds that provide hazard mitigation assistance to local governments to reduce risk from the natural hazards.

And the last one, which Department of Land and Natural Resources participates in, National Dam Safety Program, provides vital support in the form of funding, technical assistance and research for states and territories with enacted dam safety programs.

FEMA has two annual funding opportunities, the Rehabilitation of High Hazard Potential Dams Grant Program and the National Dam Safety State Assistance Grant Program. So within all these grants there's programs that have evolved and gone away as well related to different criteria, whether it's economic based, less served communities and so forth.

So those are some other aspects that have evolved and have changed over this last Administration within the funding sources for the, for this mitigation process. So those are some of the funding sources. Now we get into the plan organization. So I'll focus on Hawaii county and the vendors that we pick up.

They all know the process and so everybody, you know, we're trying to get the pretty much the same kind of document. So they follow this organization as well. So the Hawaii County Hazard Mitigation Plan provides a detailed review and analysis of each hazard of concern, resources and relevant statistical information.

The core planning document includes a description of the county as well as information on mitigation planning and how the risk assessment and capability assessment were performed. In addition to providing information on the mitigation strategy and the core plan includes the following chapters.

Part 1 the planning process and planning area. Planning process a description of the plan, methodology, method, method methodology and development process, committee and stakeholder roles and activities and how the plan will be incorporated into existing programs. So when we take this plan out and start this, start the outreach, we include public scoping, we include government outreach.

We just try to get the most comprehensive participation from all, all corners of the island, all county, all districts, all layers and levels of government departments to get the best plan that we can come up with.

So the county profile is an Overview of the Hawaii county, including general information and physical conditions, land use patterns and trends, population and demographics, the economy, general building stock inventory, community lifelines and natural, historic and cultural resources. So you see that everything, every facet of life is looked at for this plan.

So part two is the risk assessment method. Methodology. Methodology, sorry, description of the methodology used to assess hazard risks and the status of local data.

So we look at the hazards of concern identification, documentation of the process of identifying the natural hazards of concern for further profiling and evaluation. Hazard profiles and findings of the risk assessment, which is estimates of the impact of hazard events on life, safety and health. General billing, stock, critical facilities, the economy, and natural, historic and cultural resources.

Then we do a hazard ranking description and summary of the hazard ranking process. So for, for this, the hazard, the risk portion of it, we engage the subject matter experts. Like I mentioned, the flood, the dam safety, we engage DLNR on the dam situations on the island.

We may have even talked to DOT highways about the roadways, the bridges, definitely the volcanoes. We engage Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory. And they help us go through the documents as far as accuracy and making sure that the risk levels that we are determining are accurate.

Part three is a capability assessment, which is a summary and description of the existing plan, programs and regulatory mechanisms at all levels of government that support hazard mitigation within the county. I think what that is kind of saying is we don't just forego the 2020 and previous plans.

We carry these plans on as far as, you know, what, what was, what were the goals in the previous plan? Do they still carry over, which in some cases we did carry over quite a few of the projects from the previous plan that were not completed.

So the fourth part is mitigation and strategy information regarding the mitigation goals and objectives identified by the mitigation working group in response to priority hazards of concern and the process by which county and local mitigation strategies have been developed or updated. So the mitigation working group comes in out to be the county departments.

You know, planning is there, the key departments participate, the utilities participate. So they're all at the table to work and be part of this plan.

And then lastly is the continued plan maintenance for the next five years to make sure that we are achieving our goals, that they are accurate and that, you know, it's basically a working document so that, you know, you're looking at whatever mitigation efforts you're trying to achieve match what's, what's on this, what's within this document.

So that's not the End yet. That's the end of my slides.

But so the process, basically I kind of started that we go out and get a vendor, we organize the counties, like I said, we come up with a working group, we look at, we start with the previous document, the previous multi hazard mitigation plan, and work with that to- stop sharing.

Okay, so we work with the previous plan, 2020, and we use that to basically as our template to develop the 2025. The vendors, we engage with all our partners to do the update of the different hazards, the risks that we have to mitigate and come up with our action plans and the projects.

And then all that is going on while we do multiple public scoping to make sure that the public, the community is engaged. So with that, you know, then we get to the point where both FEMA and State Emergency Management and have to be, have to sign off on the plan.

So that goes back and forth for a while and then once all the tweaks are done, we'll submit it finally to FEMA, who signed off on ours earlier this month. And I think the state is probably close to signing off on their portion of it. In a nutshell, basically, that's how the mitigation plan is done.

Let me just add a couple more things. You know, it's, it's a very robust program because, you know, you've come to me to ask about our multi hazard mitigation program or plan, but there's actually a state hazard mitigation forum, so each county is represented, HIEMA is represented.

So, you know, they kind of are the, the tip of the spear for the, for the state where changes in the program will come to them. They'll, they'll disperse that through the counties. So there's all these different levels of the mitigation program. For the counties, we have to go through the state.

So, you know, that's part of HIEMAs responsibility. And so we work and coordinate together to make this program work.

I guess what I'm saying is that Haima is more the expert at the mitigation plan than we are in the counties.

You're selling yourself short. Is this a good time to interject some questions?

Absolutely.

I'll warm up first and then I'll turn it over to some of my colleagues because I just want to get some baseline questions done. This is a planning document that counties have to do in order to be able to qualify for federal funding. I just want to clarify that and make that clear.

Yes.

Okay. And then I really appreciate, I really want. I understand that Hyima has. Has more probably statewide authority and a more higher view, but really for emergency management planning purposes, the counties are. Play such a critical role because each of you have to manage a different set of hazards. Is that a correct statement?

Yeah, absolutely. So Hyima's role is to support the counties. We're on the ground and we rely on the county departments, we rely on the state departments, all our partners to manage each of our counties. I guess Haima is the administrator and.

The kind of clearinghouse.

Yes.

And I appreciate what you said about how you carry forward the planning and the mitigation goals from the previous plan. So when I look at the plan, and again, these are all different from county to county.

So for our audience, Oahu just recently submitted their plan as well, and I think they're just a little bit ahead of you. Is that correct, Talmadge, where they're going to be? It looks like theirs is going to be approved first, I believe. And you guys are right up next.

Ours is approved by FEMA already.

Okay. So maybe we can find out the status of the. Of city and county. But I know that they too also had been going out with the process of informing the public about what they had recently passed. So back to that question about or the point about how you carry things forward in your plan.

It was very interesting to me to see those pieces and mitigation actions where the status was unknown, the status of improvement was unknown. And I will say this. For the most part, everything that civil defense was doing, things were in progress. Right. And I'm not holding you to. I'm not pointing this out to.

I don't want to shame anybody, but I just wanted to identify those because I think for me it's a little bit concerning. Like the actions where the lead agency was fired and the mitigation was to establish fire breaks around communities and along roadways. The status in the planning documents is unknown, but I'm certain that things are Happening.

Can you speak to some of that? And before you even comment on that, I'm going to put state DOT a little bit on the hook in the planning document. Says lead agency, Hawaii State DOT support agency, Hawaii County, status unknown at the time of this plan. And the mitigation action was coordinate with the state to upgrade retrofit.

Retrofit Singing Bridge to address chronic coastal flooding and impacts from tsunami. Tsunami Project critical. Criticality of the DPW Bridge to get retrofitted to prevent isolated populations. I point these out because I think this plan, it's a massive plan. Right. And it's a five year plan.

Over time, you're constantly updating it and addressing it with multiple agencies and then funding changes, priorities change from 2020 to 202122. So, like these things that are unknown or progress, there doesn't seem to be reported progress. Do you pick these things up in the plan as you move forward? Maybe that's a question for Talmage.

And if you want to chime in, Ed, you can.

Yeah, I kind of, I guess I kind of stepped back when you said that because we know especially Ed and I that DOT put in a lot of fire or fuel breaks.

Yeah.

Around our communities. So, and, and I know, and Ed definitely, that's, you know, his realm. But that the Singing Bridge, as we call it, is scheduled for, for major repairs coming up.

That's why one of the projects that we have for our public works is a bridge further up on Wailuku river needs to be repaired or redone because that'll take the load when the Wailuku, the Singing Bridge is being repaired. So it's kind of. Yeah, we're trying to coordinate that, but work's been done. DOT has been working.

Okay. I didn't mean to point out the holes in this draft plan, but I guess the point to be made is that these things are carried forward. And then in the planning document, as you move forward, because as I view it, this, this mitigation planning document, 2025 is a living document.

It's something that you folks are constantly revisiting and, and, and reviewing year after year. Is that, is that a correct statement, Talmage?

Yeah, like you said in the, the work plan, we look at it every year, we review it every year for that five year period. Well, four year period because in the fourth year we start doing a revision.

And maybe the last question before I turn it over to some of my colleagues, you know, in the plan there's a lot of references to funding opportunities and this might be an unfair Question to you, Talmaj. And so maybe when Director Barros is here, I'll ask him.

But is there any indication that these funding programs have been cut under HR1 and that this exercise that we're undergoing, counties and state, which I applaud you for doing, you have to do it because if the money is there, we need to be ready to draw down those monies.

But is there any indication that some of these funding grant programs are not going to be there from your perspective? And we can ask Director Barros.

You know, initially we were, you know, concerned, but right now we're moving ahead like things are still going to be there. So. And, and we've seen already where maybe the review up in Washington has been done and things have been approved, but we see where some funding sources have been re established. And so we're optimistic and moving forward.

And I thank you guys for doing this because if, again, if the. If the funding source is open, we have to be ready. And all of these and these documents are not just about funding. It's also about communicating what is our priorities. And then one last question.

I noticed that in the funding sections there is some comments about how there's matches. Is this plan shared with the county council and are they also given opportunities to identify where they might be able to put in matching funds so that it's just not on the state.

County council approves this plan so they know what the needs are to FEMA and state.

Okay.

And we highly encourage them to participate in all of our meetings.

Okay, thank you. Members, questions?

I just have a quick question. I have to bounce out to another meeting and I'll be back. But for you, my question is these federal funding sources, you know, there's usually a distinction between hazard mitigation and disaster preparedness.

And I'm wondering if these federal funding sources can be drawn down to support evacuation routes which are normally considered to be more a part of disaster preparedness than hazard mitigation. But what's your experience with that?

I thought you were looking at Ed. I mean, I was.

My question is really for Ed.

So from the DOT side, there is no funding from. From FHWA for evacuation routes. They fund.

So that those funds cannot be used for evacuations. Okay.

So we really appreciate the funding that the Legislature had given us last year, the 15 million to ensure that we keep moving forward.

Okay, I'll be back.

Representative Shimizu, any questions for Talmadge from his county perspective?

No. No questions

All right, Thomas, if you could just stay on. You're welcome to turn Your camera off, but we might have questions for you at the end. So if you're, if you can still stay on with us, that'd be great and then we'll turn it over to you. Director Transportation Ed Sniffen.

Thank you very much Chair Belatti and really appreciate you putting this together to make sure we could talk through some of these issues as we're working with all of the county DMS and with Hyma to ensure that we can get better at this whole process. I have a short presentation, five slides. Hopefully everything came through.

So next slide please. So first, the first slide, we're just detailing the timeline that we had for this event. The great thing about this event is we had four hours to prepare prior to the first arrival in this area. We looked at everything from our DOT perspective and not necessarily from the statewide planning perspective.

So this is kind of what we worked off of. We got the watch at about 125 at that time for DOT. That means we start coordinating with our staff to determine who's going to stay and who's going to leave.

We don't want all of our staff staying because once they work through their 24 hour shift, we don't want everybody burnt. So we make sure that we parcel out those that are going to stick around as the emergency and we're going to send the others home during that time.

We're going to look at the watch, wait for the warning to come through though before we start taking that action on everything.

Once the warning came through, because we knew we would have time, that's when we started deploying all of our staff to make sure that we took all of our equipment out of areas that would be inundated.

In those inundation zones, we evacuated the equipment on the personnel to ensure that they were in hardened areas outside of inundation zones to ensure that we can respond as quickly as possible after the event's done. So we did that very quickly at around 3 o' clock or so.

We wanted to make sure that we got our staff and our personnel set. We reported out at 3:54. That's where we, we put everything under that, that heading during that time.

The actions that we took from the time the, the warning came out till that that report out at 3:54 with Haymot on the statewide meeting during that time, we opened up Kole Pass. I got to tell you, the, the military are amazing partners.

The base commander from Pearl Harbor and the garrison commander from the army reached out both at the same time to say Kolekole is ready for you when you need it for evacuation. When do you want to open it? And I said now. And they said, got it.

So they deployed all their people across the route to make sure that they could open everything up to ensure that anyone on the west side could use Kolekole Pass to get up to central area. And that was opened up about 3:15. We reported it to the public around 3:30.

Wanted to make sure that personnel were all set throughout that area. But 3:15 in General was opened up also during that time. At about 3:30, we started looking at all the projects and the counterfoas that we have set up.

We wanted to make sure we got rid of anything that would be getting in the way of getting people out of the inundation zones. So Nanakuli counterfo that we need every day to make sure that we get everybody back to the west side, back home. We stopped that because we needed everybody out of the coast.

Now we made sure that we reversed that. I want to make sure that we had the capacity. We also took out some projects that we had closed on. I mean, Likideke highway was closed because we were doing some work at Willson Tunnel. We took away that closure to make sure that was opened up as well.

And we also looked at all of our airports. We wanted to make sure that when we started looking at our facilities, we knew what was in inundation zones and what wasn't one of the big ones. And Talmadge is a great partner in. This is our Hilo Airport is the evacuation route for the Keaukaha community.

So once an emergency is declared and that evacuation notice is given, that airport got to shut down. And that's. I mean, that's one of the weaknesses that we have with some of the evacuation routes that we have out there. So all of our airports stayed open except that one.

We had to close that one down and there's no operation there. Now. The airlines may elect not to operate at different airports, but we keep the airports open though, in those areas that happened during that timeframe as well. During that time, we started coordinating with the Coast Guard. They're going to give us their port condition process throughout.

At some point, if a tsunami is coming, they're going to kick everybody out, make sure that that port is protected from the potential of ships doing damage to facilities if storm conditions arise. That's where we were at about 3:54 during this time frame.

Of course, on all of our overhead message boards that are, that are operational, we started putting out tsunami warnings for everybody, making sure that everybody out there saw them. By seven o', clock, we confirmed statewide that all of the roads in the inundation zones were all cleared. And this is working with all of the county student EOCs.

When we start this process and we get this warning, we send representatives from highways and airports to the county EOCs to make sure that we work with them. As Talmadge had said, the counties run the emergency response the state supports.

We make sure that we're at the EOC so we can coordinate with them with all of our resources. We let them know where everybody's at and what we can do to assist in different areas. It doesn't matter if we're assisting on state or county roads or private property.

If the county says it needs to get done, we'll get it done. That's the process that we run through. Throughout we made sure that we worked with James here to make sure that we got messaging out to the Governor for their normal reports going out to the public. Next slide, please.

So during the response, as everybody saw, traffic wasn't the best when we started doing the evacuation, and understandably so, I mean, during this time frame, when we get to the 3 o'clock time frame, we're starting up our PM peak traffic already.

Add to that a group of people who normally wouldn't be on the road during the evacuations and you know that the site, the local streets all going to be going to be inundated with traffic. So congestion was big. If you got onto the freeway, the freeway traffic wasn't bad.

It starts getting bad when you start getting to off ramps because the local streets were congested and again rightfully so, we had people moving in different areas that they normally wouldn't at that time.

So when we started looking at how the evacuation occurred for the next time, this can be as part of our report and part of our discussions with Hyima. We're going to make sure that our communications to the public are timely.

We're going to make sure that before we start pulling the trigger on everybody leave the office, we're going to be looking at which intersections. Do we have to have police or flagmen or in some cases military to ensure that we can start flushing traffic through.

If we had that in place before traffic built up, it would be a lot easier for us to push traffic through those areas. Regardless of what the lights say at the jtmc, they were controlling signals to the extent possible, but we don't have access to all the signals from there.

If we had people at different locations, it would have been a lot smoother. Still would have been traffic, but a lot smoother. We also got to make sure that for the public there's an understanding of what all the alerts mean. I don't know that everybody understands what a watch or alert or warning means from their perspectives.

And we'll get more information out to the public so they understand that. I'm sorry, an advisory. The biggest thing for us is it was clear that not many understood where they were in the zones, in the inundation and evacuation zones. They didn't know if they were in the extreme evacuation zone or the evacuation zone.

A lot of people, it took them about an hour and a half to leave their parking structures from their downtown offices. They could have just went upstairs in a hardened structure and they would have been evacuated. They would have been in high ground already. In some cases in Waikiki, many could have just walked three blocks away.

It would have taken them 10 minutes and they would have been fine. But they jumped in their vehicle and added to the traffic in those areas. So for us, a lot of these things got to be clarified to the public to ensure everybody understands where they are.

One of the things, if you had tried to jump on the state or city websites to look at the zones during that time, you wouldn't be able to get on. The sites were overloaded. But there's, what are they called, stills or whatever it is, PDFs, a site where there's PDFs available that's really easy to get to.

We got to get more information out there to everybody so that they can pre look at it before events occur, get a general understanding of where they are, where they live and where they work, but also during event, make sure that there's access to that too. So those are the things that we saw from the public response.

Slide, please. Some of the lessons we took from this, and this is in all modes when we're considering. We at the airport considered that over our PA system. We're announcing things that were impacting flights. And we assumed that if everybody's coming to the airport, they would have understood what was happening outside.

What we didn't do was give enough information to those who are landing at the airport or deciding, you know what, I'm just going to leave already so that they would understand the instances that they're going to be getting out to or the situation they'll be getting out to if they leave the airport area.

So a couple adjustments that we're making over there, we're making sure that we have PA announcements that are as necessary throughout. As I said, we have airport personnel at the EOCs, so they're updated on everything the counties and the state has to offer. We can provide that to those that are at the airport as well.

We'll make sure that all the TVs and all the boards that are out there have one of the local stations running to ensure that because they're reporting 247 everybody can see what's going on in the airport itself. Making sure that that messaging is always out there.

We want to make sure that everybody understands what a refuge area means. When there was one of the airlines sent their people home so people on Kauai couldn't check through that airlines and get into the terminal. Terminal was secured because TSA was still working, so they couldn't get through, they couldn't get ticketed.

They decided instead of staying at our airport in one of our secured areas, outside of the secure zone, they wanted to go to the refuge areas. So we put on a bus to get them to one of the two KCC. When they got there, they're disappointed. There was no blankets, there was no food.

From their perspective, they thought it was going to be an area where they not just refuge, not just a place they could stay, but that they could get the comforts of home. And it was just not the case in this kind of situation.

So we just got to be clear to them on what this looks like on the highways evacuation side. We got to make sure that if you don't have to evacuate, you're not moving, you stay where you are. So we got to get that message out to everybody.

We also got to let them know in a situation like this with a tsunami, no need to buy gas, no need go get toilet paper, no need to get beer. I mean, no need any of that stuff at this time. Let's stay where you are.

If you're in a zone that's already outside of the inundation area and let the people who got to evacuate actually use the roadways, I want to make sure that we start pushing out the messaging on what evacuation actually means, whether you can walk, whether you can go vertically upstairs, all those pieces got to be clarified to the public.

And of course, like I said before, we got to make sure that we can put people where they need to be to ensure that we can push the volumes through to clear as much as possible throughout.

Again, I got to say the evacuation was a success in that by seven o', clock, everybody was Outside of the inundation zones, it can be a lot smoother. A lot smoother. Next slide, please.

So the biggest thing for dot, we are modeling now evacuation criteria for each of the islands to ensure that we understand first how best to consider each of our intersections.

So understand where we got to flush people, which roadway portions we should reverse to ensure that we get two lanes in one direction versus two directional traffic, and which areas we should just shut down from the beginning to ensure that we minimize the potential for people to add to traffic unnecessarily.

So we try to see what that's going to look like as part of this adjustment. And this is a really good thing. For this last event. There was no school in session at the time. We're going to be tying into DOE to understand what evacuation means for them.

Right now, the policy for DOE is if your kid is at school, don't worry about them during evacuation. I need to know what that means, though. How are we making sure that we're evacuating kids who need to be evacuated from zones? How are we taking care of kids who are going to stay at the school itself?

Once we understand that and can tie it into our plan, I think we can really understand what the transportation is actually going to look like. Our report is going to be done by November, so we can tie into the coordination with Hyima and with the counties.

As I said, we can kind of consider what everything's going to look like, but we want to model it to ensure first how efficient, how we can make the roads ways more efficient.

And if there are areas with single accesses, what emergency access points do we need to add for situations like this, for like, wildfires and the like? So that'll be done in November. Next slide, please. Then the last slide is for Wildfire.

As we talked about before, Chair Belatti, one of the biggest things we wanted to do is make sure that we address situations so we don't have another Lahaina. One of the biggest things we could do. We know that there's communities right now that have single accesses in and out.

And it's very difficult for me to promise there's going to be a new roadway within the next 10 years because of cost and because of permitting. I mean, it's very difficult. But I know I can cut fire breaks tomorrow.

So what we've been doing is working with Hyima, with the local departments of emergency management and with fire departments to identify high risk areas to ensure that we can cut fuel where necessary. We can cut fire Breaks where necessary, and we can add emergency accesses where necessary.

And again, we don't care for state road, county roads or private land. We're going to do it. We started this right after the line of fires, just using our own highway funding. But last year, the Legislature gave us 15 million to make sure that we can push this a lot faster.

And again, even if we didn't get the funding, we would do it, especially because of the safety needs for the public. And this 15 million is going to help us push things forward a lot faster than we could have before. So really appreciate that. In addition to our fire mitigation pieces, let me back up.

In areas where we cut fuel, there were fallow lands right now that are just overrun by California grass and invasives. We cut the grass, it's going to come back. Instead of just cutting it and leaving it, we're cutting it and looking at planting natives in those areas.

Natives are a lot more resilient, a lot more drought resistant, and a lot more fire resistant. We're working with one of our consultants now to make sure that we have a pallet for each island of natives that we can plant in different areas. When we clear the land, sometimes the land gets cleared by itself, like in Kunia.

I mean, it's getting burned right now. Once it's burned, we don't want it to grow back as invasives. We'll start looking at how we can plant natives in those zones just to make sure that we can be more resilient moving forward.

And the last piece for us is making sure operationally, we're tying into local fire departments during events. During events. Once there's a fire that's occurring in different areas, our staff are reaching out on the highway side and the airport side to the local fire departments to see how we can help in different areas. Especially during.

In wildland fires, there is no water source there. So we send out fire trucks, water trucks. I'm sorry, from our highways group and our airports group to make sure that they can help refill trucks during the events. We also send out our airport firefighters where necessary. So if they need support in different areas, we'll send them out.

One of the things we're doing and one of the limitations we had in the past is our airport firefighters are trained for. For planes, not necessarily trained for building fires or wildland fires.

We'll set up training for them or they're going to be running through the same training as our local fire departments to ensure that if situations occur, we can assist in a better Fashion. So those are the adjustments that we're making on the DOT side specifically for those two types of events. That's all I have. Thank you.

I don't think I need warm up questions for this. Any questions, Members?

So many questions. Do you mind if I start? Yes, go ahead. Okay, so my first question has to do just what you just said, which is with respect to handling the fires and working with the local firefighters. In Kunia, there are a great many unpermitted structures, so there is no infrastructure for water out there.

So does that mean that when those folks are building illegal structures on AG land that the taxpayers are responsible for that additional cost of flying water in? Because that's what we saw out on our side was choppers coming in with water. And that was a community question for that portion.

I don't know who bears the cost. I'm just sending resources out there to make sure nothing burns.

Okay, so that's fair and good. And then I guess a follow up question has to do with the evacuation routes. And I guess I'm curious as to the extent to which you're willing to work with.

You know, a lot of our older Kupuna have deep knowledge of the area and routes, like Kane Hall Roads and things that are not currently being used for any purpose that's public. But I would like to work with you and with my community to identify routes that could be opened up in case of a fire.

And then I'd also like to work out a plan like who. Who gives that signal and who is responsible for those openings and what would that look like?

Makes sense.

Okay, and is that, is that something that you're doing with various communities? Because I mean, for us, you know, that whole part of my district is in the tsunami zone, so they all need to evacuate and they did not feel like they were able to do that effectively. So that's why I'm asking the question.

Yeah, of course. And for us, we felt that the best way to make sure we get community input is to give a strawman out there, make sure that there's something. The last thing I want to do is just go out to a community and say what you think this doesn't go well.

So I want to make sure that we have a plan to get put a plan together, model things out, say what we think makes sense and get input on what would be better.

Okay. And we'll also come to you with our ideas. Yeah, perfect.

Thank you.

I don't think Representative.

Perruso ever has a lack of ideas, which I really appreciate. Representative Shimizu.

Thank you, Chair. I'd like to echo that question of working out with you a bypass road strategy. So, I can get together with you later on, I guess. Yeah, perfect. Sounds good. I had a question regarding your presentation.

When you explained the tsunami situation and analyzing it, seeing what you could do better, and you mentioned identifying safe zones, yeah, where people can really stay and not add to the traffic and so forth, yeah. So, once you identify that, I guess that message has to go out to educate the people.

And also, the roads you mentioned maybe even shutting down some roads or contra-flowing some road patterns, because I guess the public needs to know that in advance, otherwise they're not going to know what to do, yeah? I guess that's part of the plan then, yeah?

Oh, absolutely. I think overall on the safe zones, I think HIEMA and the DMs did a really good job of showing on mapping which areas are in evacuation zones, and which ones are not. But like anything else, right, this is not a daily thing. It's very difficult for us to get across to the public.

You got to know this, you got to know you living in the inundation zone or not? Because it shows very clearly on the maps, if you're out of this area, you're good. If you're in this area, you should evacuate. But we just got to get the messaging out a little bit more effectively to the public.

And I agree with you on the plan for evacuation. We got to get more information out to the public and we will, and they gonna forget and it's fine. And it's fine because we're just gonna have to keep getting in front of people. During tsunami, tsunami, sea, or during hurricane season, this is what evacuation gonna look like.

Or when, when an earthquake occurs that doesn't generate a tsunami, we can put out more and say but if it did, this is what it would look like for your community to evacuate. I think we just gotta get better. We gotta, gotta take more opportunities where we're available to get more information out there to the public.

So, maybe printed literature too so that they have it in front of them, they can study it and know it.

I guess would be good to have like public hearings and discussion because even if, let's say you identify others and you say oh, you know, safe zone, just stay at your office, your kids are safe at school, you know, the mentality might be, no, I like go home, you know, I like do this or whatever, you know, how do you kind of like, manage that too, yeah.

And that's fine. And people gonna want to go some places, and we're not gonna stop them, but we can be telling them, you stay, you stay where you are. You're gonna be safe, and, and you don't have to deal with the issues. You jump in that traffic, gonna be three hours.

At least giving them the option. And if, and if they choose that, that's fine, because everybody who got to the...area was on the freeway, was safe. They were outside of the inundation zone. They were safe. Took a long time to get home, but they were safe.

So, for me, I'm not into telling people what they can and cannot do, but I will give them options to ensure that they understand what safety looks like.

Good job. Thank you, Director.

I have some questions. So, actually, the experience for me during the tsunami here on this island. I work downtown, and I end up walking home. My husband got out, and I live literally, like, maybe 10 minutes away, living in Makiki, right. He got out and was stuck.

And at some point, I was like, I'm just gonna start walking home, and you start driving home. I almost got home the same time he got home.

And as I was walking and I'm looking and watching people doing what they were doing, I actually was really proud of our community, because even though people were stuck in traffic, people were moving and moving with aloha and trying to get out. But I did feel like I was like—I feel like we were responding to a hurricane versus a tsunami, and people didn't really know the difference. Right?

I had a coworker who—and outside of my window, I can see the harbor—she was still at the office, and we were getting calls from other people who said, I'm in a car. I left an hour ago.

And I'm just like by Hale Kauila. And so, it was like I called her and said, you just go up. Just go upstairs. And so, I think that communication and education is really important because we have been conditioned and learned about how to respond to hurricanes for so long.

I totally agree with you.

And that—it's just different. And so, now that we know that there's more threats, we have to figure out that communication.

Totally agree. And I would echo your sentiment to the public. During that time that people were evacuating, some of those commutes are three and a half hours, but we didn't get any reports of road rage. Nobody getting out and yelling at each other, nobody beeping horns to tell somebody, get out of the way.

Everything was as polite as possible, given the situation.

Yeah. And I will say I was talking with Representative Perruso because she was stuck in Cheshire. I said, just come to my house. I can see the traffic and everything's like gridlocked, so just go to my house. She goes okay and she got home late.

Here's the question I have because it's—it perked my ear when you said Hilo Airport is an evacuation route, so they were the only airport that had to close down. And then you said airlines, they chose to shut down. And I just remember, because shortly right after the tsunami, a number of legislators were in Boston for the National Conference for State Legislatures.

I was talking to some transportation people there and they were just like, what happened at the airport? And these are folks who design airports, and they were, they were saying people were stuck in the airport parking lot for hours.

And I am wondering, because we just had this experience as the Public Safety Committee today where we were able to visit the emergency warehouse for the Health Care Management kind of, you know, the industry, right, right. If the airlines themselves were independently deciding to shut down, which I understand why they would, is there any group at the airports where they are coordinating things?

And this is not to say that it should be you, Ed, coordinating these things, but if industry, as a matter of their own protocols, decide to do something that then causes this impact.

Because I will tell you, when people in Boston are telling me and asking me what the heck happened and then they're showing me TikTok videos of people just going kind of crazy in the airports and poor Hawaiian airline staff members just announcing things, it seemed not coordinated.

Is there, in the after action planning process, a way for the private folks to kind of hui up and figure out what they can do in their area?

Absolutely. So, we do have a group that coordinates. We have an EOC specifically set up at the airports and all of the airlines are there, so we know exactly who's going to operate and who won't. And we talked to them about their messaging to their communities to ensure that everybody understands it.

Which is why for us, we always recommend before people come to the airport in these kinds of situations, always connect up with your carrier first before you come down.

That being said, in these kinds of situations, so if it was during that cloud strike time, right when everything went down, the airlines were on the hook for taking care of everybody. In their contracts, they say extreme weather, Act of God, they are no longer responsible for taking care of—and that's the way the situation is.

So, they're no longer responsible for taking care of the reservations or hotels for any of the passengers that may miss the flights because they stop services in those areas. So, we housed 1500 or so passengers at Honolulu Airport, another 1500 in Maui, maybe like 500, I think, was in Kona, something like that. 50 or so in Kauai.

So, we had different passenger counts at different airports because those airlines were shutting down during the event on Maui, specifically, because it's an inundation zone, but they're definitely going to start up as soon as they could.

So, we wanted to make sure that we could keep everybody as comfortable as possible in those areas while the airlines were deciding when they could go. But again, when you start looking into contracts for airlines with their passengers, there's specific events they say they're responsible for and others that they're just not. In those situations, we try to work out as much as possible to either keep them safe or send them out someplace else.

I guess then just to kind of push back a little bit on that, I mean, I will assert that I think we can do things a little differently.

And while it's outside of their contract, I mean, just for operational purposes, and for goodness' sake, some of those airlines looked really bad in the way that they were handling it. So, it's actually in their interest to have some sort of coordinated response, and maybe that's not something.

I don't know what best airport practices are, but is there other places where that kind of like just, I'm going to decide to do this and then I'm going to go and then operate independently?

Is there any best practice out there where we see airport users coordinating in the event, even though I get it, they're not going to be liable, right?

Best practices for these is to make sure that if the airlines are going to start up operations after the event's done, we try to keep everybody as comfortable as possible in the terminal, so they can leave as soon as possible. That's the best practice.

So, we worked with the airlines who have also been good partners in setting up some supplies to make sure that if we do have events like this, we can bring them out and keep everybody comfortable. So, water, snacks, and things like that. A lot of airlines put stuff out.

When I say they're not, they're not responsible, they're not going to put you in a hotel, stuff like that. But they did have their staff there. There's only one airline that pulled all their people and sent them home. And I'm not going to say who, but, but most of the Airlines kept their people there to make sure that they could keep their passengers as comfortable as possible, given the situation.

Maybe the other thing is that it's not—maybe it's difficult to coordinate a very tight response.

But that communications that you said, that you talked about, about having certain communications, making sure that the airport automatically started putting out local news and then making sure all that that was unified, that's maybe another place where it could have alleviated some of the problems we saw.

Absolutely. And those are discussions we had already to make sure that we're for the next event. It's already set.

Questions?

A quick follow up question around the fire and tsunami evacuation routes. So, you know, as you know, most of Wahiawa is surrounded by the military and I was wondering if we develop an arrangement with, you know, the army where we can use some of their roads to evacuate. Do I need to have you in those meetings?

I do. Okay. Just curious. I mean, it's hard to coordinate sometimes, so.

And Rachel's awesome. Rachel and Sam, Rachel at Army and Sam at the Navy, amazing partners and they're looking for ways that they can reach out and help the community.

And I'll say during the Kunia Fires, Rachel sent up two Chinooks to help with water drops in those areas, just to make sure we could help put out the fires in those areas and keep the fire from cresting to potentially get to the Leeward Coast.

So, those are the Chinooks that my community saw.

So, we had five aircraft in that. Five, right? Five aircraft in that area running water drops throughout while Honolulu Fire Department was on the ground taking care of things there. So, awesome partners and happy to talk to Rachel to see how we work things out.

That—one of the things that we're going to have to work out with them is what security looks like. It was easy to talk about securing Kolekole Pass because it's one route through the area where they could portion everything off.

Yeah.

Little more difficult if we're talking about different routes running through that base because they still got to maintain security there.

Yeah. Mostly east range.

Last question. Go ahead.

Yeah. Related to Chair Belatti's question regarding the airport and coordinating that, I guess because we saw the Hawaii Health emergency management, how they are like the hub and they coordinate with the different health providers like airport, the private airlines, or other private industries which are significant, is there that type of connectivity as far as communication and coordination and compliance, I guess?

I wouldn't say compliance, I say partnership because we had an EOC set up with all the airlines there. All of our airline partners were there. All of our ARF people were there to ensure that from a health and safety perspective.

For the public, what is an EOC?

Oh, EOC, that was Emergency Operations Center. So, we call it an EOC even though it's not part of the statewide network that's set up. We call it that because we want to make sure that we bring everybody to the table to be partners in all of this.

So, all of our efforts and our actions are coordinated with all the airlines that are there and our concessionaires.

For our host who runs our concessions, they kept everything open for all of our passengers who were stuck, when they normally shut down at about 11, kept it open throughout to ensure that everybody could still buy stuff if they needed it.

Okay, thank you.

Before we move on to our last presenter, I just want to acknowledge that Dr. Randall Collins, who was invited here, we put him on the agenda because we were trying to work out the schedule. It did not work out. So, we are going to invite Dr. Collins back.

City and County of Honolulu is also in the same hazard mitigation planning process as County of Hawaii. And what I wanted to highlight was how different each of the counties were. We probably could spend whole six hours on City and County of Honolulu. So, we will invite him back at a time that's convenient.

I want to switch now to our next presenter, Administrator James Barros. And this is actually a really good kind of segue because, you know, we heard the mitigation planning process. We learned just now the after action report from the tsunamis and wildfires that we've seen recently, HIEMA really has kind of the Kuleana, the responsibility, to help with planning overall from mitigation to response and after response.

And so, if I'm going to just turn it over to you, Administrator Barros, commenting on any of this, all of this, and then we'll open it up for questions.

I do want to, just linking to what Ed said about the airlines and that EOC, there is a connection back to the state EOC through our business EOC. So, there is that connection back to them. We got to strengthen that connectivity because we saw what the airlines decides impacts emergency managers.

And so, we want to make sure that line of communication is open and we understand that from Department of Transportation and the airlines. So, sorry, Chair, I was a little bit late. I was—I had lunch with the consulate from Japan, as we're having conversations on our shared hazards and how we can learn from each other.

And I think that's one of the first points I want to make to the Committee is that Hawaii is in a unique position where when we look at our hazards, we got all of them. They're all listed. Every one of those hazards we got. And we share it with our island nations throughout the Pacific.

So, one of the visions that we have for HIEMA is that Hawaii becomes the center of excellence for emergency management in the Pacific, where we're bringing people together to learn from one another, to learn what kind of strategies worked in the response, in the recovery phase.

This morning, when I said Guam doesn't want tents, and to hear that from their administrator going, here's what we're trying to get to for sheltering or for temporary housing and American Samoa and what they did for tsunamis and how they prepared after their tsunami, what are they looking at.

They did—for them, it was a real aggressive strategy for tsunami education, and they used a lot of the elementary school kids for tsunami education. Two years ago, we started our Tsunami Ambassador Program, which, our first group we took was from St. Louis. We took some—yes, sir.

We took them to the Big Island through the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and educated them on tsunami, and the idea is that we—we take students to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, learn from the experts up there. If you haven't gone to that museum, you have to go to Hilo and see that museum.

And just the display and the stories that are told, learn that piece and then bring it back and then now educate other elementary students. So, we're working on that. So, the Tsunami Ambassador is one of our programs.

The partnership that Ed spoke about, that has to be throughout the emergency management enterprise and everyone in state, private sector, nonprofits, communities, they gotta really believe that they are part of our enterprise, that they're an extension of what emergency management is in Hawaii.

If, and that's kind of my second point. For me, on day one, from the day I took this job, I understood the center of gravity for Hawaii is in our communities and strengthening our communities has been number one. It hasn't been easy.

It's been a struggle to get this concept out there, that it's the individual communities that will make a difference, that will make us stronger. The tsunami evacuation, the maps, that's a neighborhood understanding of it. One of our employees, their neighbor came out and said, are we in an evacuation zone? And he's like, no, stay where you are.

So, getting that education. I agree with everything Ed said about our messaging and educating the public. But now, as we have these pockets of strong communities that understand that, that can share that, that are looking in their neighborhoods for the vulnerable population. We talked about this morning with the health care, that vulnerable population.

You guys brought up AARP this morning. That's one of the groups that John Vieira, my community guy, had several meetings with and has some follow up meetings on how are we identifying and how are we servicing them. It's, it's got to be a neighborhood solution. It's got to be a community—a kako effort—on our vulnerable population.

I know Tom Rich talked about mitigation and county and DM will talk about mitigation. The mitigatio—and I'll say we haven't done a good job in the state as far as mitigation.

We're getting better, I think, as we leverage the green fee and be able to tap into some of that money to really address some of the risks that are out there. When I look at the projects, the 34 projects that were put into FEMA, we made every deadline to FEMA.

We got it in the bucket on the deadline. So, we're good. It's all in review right now. 34 projects are in review with FEMA. That'll leverage that 300 million that's available to the state for mitigation.

I'm very happy—I'm very proud of the 34 projects that went in because it will address our ability in that response phase and in that recovery phase. So, it, it strengthens our state.

How much? 240 million? You said 340?

It's about 340 million. Yes, sir.

This is under what FEMA program?

It's under the hazard mitigation. It's a—it's the Hazard Mitigation 404. So, it's the, the funds that become available after a disaster. And because of the nature of Lahaina's Fire, it just opened up that much more money. Prior to that, we didn't have that kind of funds available through FEMA projects.

So, it was smaller projects that we were doing. And even with COVID, we were only able to get two projects under the COVID mitigation. So, this disaster hit the State of Hawaii, opened up that kind of funding for us for mitigation.

Can I ask that? It's the hazard mitigation grant program?

Yes.

It's a 75-25% match.

Yes.

And then, this was a question I asked...earlier, but really, it's a question for you. Are we seeing threats to that funding in the federal funding budget process now or is that line secure?

Right now, we are—I'm an optimist. From the signals we're getting, the hazard mitigation is safe. That's not on the table, that FEMA 404 funding.

If I could add, anytime it went up to D.C., the two things that were constant so far, funding for infrastructure and funding for emergencies were not touched. There were always discussions about limitations in different areas or from the Trump Administration perspective going back to the base law, but nothing talking about removing those funding amounts for states.

But we had to clean up the applications to ensure that there was no climate change, there was no DEI, so the application had to be Trump approval, you know, that level.

So, the focus on emergency?

Risk, mitigating risk, yes.

That is a good thing to hear, but I also know that anything can happen in politics, so it's something that we should continue to watch.

Yes.

Sorry I interrupted you. Go ahead.

So, with the center of gravity being our communities, I know...said, you know, it's, it's emergency management, it's executed at the county level. We're in support of the counties and you know, when, when Ed talks about these tankers going out to support the fires, we're supporting the first responders.

When in Cunea, I think there was, at one point, there was at least eight aircraft in the air from County, DofA, National Guard, and Army Aviation. Part of it was ensuring that it didn't crest and then get the wind to push it down into the other side of the island.

So, we're coordinating at the state, then FEMA will come in and they'll help when there's a presidential declaration. What we anticipate is our ability to get a presidential declaration—the threshold went up a little bit, so it'll be a little bit harder for us to get the President to sign to saying yes, Hawaii is in emergency.

My final point is that all of this is great, but we have to exercise it, we have to test it. So, when we looked at the tsunami event, nobody got hurt, everybody evacuated. A lot of lessons learned. But in my mind, it was another battle drill for us because nothing happened.

So, we got to continue to exercise and Major General Logan has a vision for us for 2027 so that our Makani Pahili, our federal military and their...and the National Guard's Vigilant Guard, is all combined into one exercise. And we're exercising from the state level to the county level.

First responders, all our departments, all our agencies are looking at the—the concept right now is we go into a hurricane, we do this pre-impact, we do a response, and as we're doing the response, our adversaries take advantage of that and they pull us into extended cyber threat, into possibly a homeland defense scenario.

And we're trying to capture all of that in one exercise, and it will be our ability to test everything that we're doing.

So, at HIEMA, once a month, we test the sirens, we turn all our, you know, we test all our sirens once a month, we test our generators, we test our water purification, we're testing all of our systems. In 2027, we want the entire enterprise to be testing, where we, ideally, we would have communities as part of the play, as part of an evacuation, as part of a hub, as part of a distribution site.

So, that's exercises is a critical piece for us and we're really pushing for 2027.

That seems like a very short time away. Seems a little bit ambitious.

Yes.

Okay, I'm thinking about—I know that Representative Perruso has a very active... so it would be interesting to see and test those. And I know that in urban Honolulu, I have some pockets that are starting to test resiliency hubs that are working with Serene.

Maybe we can bring in those community folks to brief the Committee because again, each community is going to have a different kind of response, and so.

So, it's important that the communities feel connected and are part of the county's plan. They have to be connected to the county's overall plan because there's going to be great community efforts that are out there, that's outside of the government, that's outside of everything that we're doing, everything that we know is happening. That'll take place.

But the best case scenario is that all of these communities are networked and part of our enterprise.

So, right now, the HRP program for the state, that's the program that we're pushing at HIEMA to say, here's what we have because what the program will do is provide training, education, some frameworks for the community to use to strengthen their response plan and the recovery plans.

And then, part of it too is there's an up-front in the program. There's kind of an evaluation of what kind of hazards am I facing in this community? So, that's—we'll walk the community through that too. So, that's why—I'm from HIEMA, we continue to push H Harps.

Okay, so for the community, the Committee and the community at large, is HRP generally funded or is it specially funded?

It's, it's a FEMA grant right now in EMPG that's funding my community outreach piece.

And is that under threat of being cut?

Not this year and not into the next—not into the next year either. So, for EMPG we're pretty safe for the next two years. Our Tsunami Ambassador Program is funded by NOAA, and we think we'll see a reduction in some monies, but we'll get, we'll get something. That's, that's what I'm tracking on for the FEMA side.

Questions.

You mentioned emergency sirens. You know, for my district. Would I be able to get like a location of all those sirens and if they're in working order?

Yes. So on our - oh, before I answer that question. Ed brought up our - the websites crashed, right when everybody clicked on, they wanted to see the map we found. For HIEMA, we found a problem. It was an odor, some kind of coding.

The IT guys gave me a full brief, but what they're telling me now is they found a fix, they upgraded it, and what they're going to do in the next week is they're going to test it with load so that they'll see the kind of load that we were getting during the tsunami and ensure that the platform is stable.

And for the sirens, there is a siren map on our website that shows the status of our 400 plus sirens throughout the state. And then you can zoom into your district. What you'll see is you'll see black sirens. That means they're out of commission, we're replacing them.

You'll see a red siren, and I have to use contractors to support that. A yellow siren. So red, yellow, they don't work. But yellow. Our state employees can go out there. It's either the battery or there's some kind of electrical issue that we can fix. HIEMA can fix that. The red my technicians cannot fix.

And we leverage contractors. And then of course, green. But right now, currently, when you go onto our site, you look at the map, it's a very static map. It's off of the data that we got on the 1st of August. So we're going to test again next week and then we'll update with the status.

I have a young man that tells me he will have a dynamic map for me very soon. And I'm waiting for him to give me the briefing on the map. But it'll be as the technicians fix it, as the contractors fix it and we accept it, they can automatically turn green from using an app.

So right now you'll just see the status of our August test. And when you look at Oahu, for example, you'll see, I think eight yellow sirens. They were all fixed already. They're - today they're green, but on the map they show yellow. And then when we do the next test, other ones are going to turn yellow.

So this information is on this website you're saying?

Yes, sir.

Okay, then.

Oh, sorry, follow up.

I'm sorry, is there like a general flowchart that shows all the different players and how they connect.

Players for what?

For our enterprise?

Yeah. I mean, whether it's FEMA, HIEMA, DOD, Civil Defense, Mayors, Governor, you know. Just to get an understanding.

Yeah. I can send you. There's a couple slides that will show this. And one of the slides in particular will show you where the EOC sit and where the incident commander and that flow of information. There's another one that. That will show.

Once we get the presidential declaration and we get the partnership with the defensive coordinating officer, he'll come in and then how does that tap in and how does US Indo-Pacific Command and that information flow happens. So there's a few slides that we can get to you, sir.

Thank you for being here. You know, we've been working in our community in Wahiawa since 2019 on the HHARP process. And we have a structure, and we've actually developed it further so that we have 35 neighborhood coordinators who all have walkie talkies. Because we were really thinking that for us, the most important threat was the hurricanes.

But we really struggle in Wahiawa because we have not been able to identify a structure that even can be improved for the sake of shelter. So I am curious about whether that is going to be revisited, because Wahiawa is also the evacuation destination for most of the North Shore. And we saw that in the tsunami.

Like, the community was packed, but there was no place for them to go. So, yeah, I guess those are my concerns that we really. We're working at the community level and we're like, putting our resources into it, but we need to be met on the other side by the state. And if HIEMA can help us prioritize or identify at least a single shelter that we could fortify.

Yeah, we've been socializing the idea of community readiness centers and that would provide that commute, our communities with this place to hunker down. And in this readiness center, you would have backup power, you would have backup communication, you would have some commodities. I was.

I think that's how we show from the state our investment in the community into this enterprise. But at the same time, you know, I say from HIEMA, we're looking at HHARPs. So if a community is not a HHARP, then the way we're looking at is, I cannot spend money on that. You're doing great stuff. I love it. But in order for you to get a readiness center, you have to be a valid HHARP with the state. So that's kind of how we're shaping it for us. That's how we're shaping it. Yeah.

Okay. I guess just clarifying question by these community readiness centers, are they - how are they different from resilience hubs?

They'll look and smell the same. But what - the messaging, what we wanted. It'll be a resiliency hub. Right. It'll build it. It'll withstand a hurricane.

Okay, so it will withstand a hurricane.

Yes.

Okay. That was my main question.

Yes, yes. But the messaging is it's a readiness center. We're trying to build readiness in the community.

Okay.

And then when you ask, ready. Ready for what? Everything. That whole list of risks that we're facing.

Great. Thank you.

Yes, go ahead.

Thank you, Chair. You know, in my community, we were surrounded in some areas by military similar. And, you know, there's vegetation that is dry fire, fire hazard. Trying to communicate with state fire marshal or the military contacts to manage that. Do you have any suggestions for that?

It really is a conversation HEIMA can have with the state fire marshal and our defensive coordinating officer. Yeah. So we can. We can pull the right people into that conversation.

So I can be in contact with you then?

Yes, sir.

Thank you, James.

Okay, I'm gonna have one more question, set of questions for Administrator Barros, and then I want to open it up to everybody. And if Talmadge is still there, if you wanted to turn on your camera. But this. This question is actually directed towards Administrator. So I really want to say thank you for addressing the sirens question.

And I think, you know, given the focus on the broken sirens, that that's been a serious concern. Do you want to add anything more to that about how you folks have any kind of, like, regular planning process to address when sirens are broken or you identify them as broken? What's the timeline on the fixes for them? And it must differ depending upon what the break is.

From day one of taking this job. The challenge is looking at the sirens and how can we expedite getting these sirens repaired. And we're looking at saying the sirens in the tsunami inundation zones along the coast, that is our priority. We got to ensure those work.

And what we did this year is we kind of broke it up a little bit, and we said, some of these tsunami sirens, I'm going to use federal money to fix. So we're leveraging some federal money. Normally it's through CIP, and we go through that process to get it fixed. And, you know, the CIP process is, I'm going to come to you guys this year for money, then I'll get it. Then I got to go to DAGS and I got to do a contract and it's, it's a long tail to get a siren fixed.

So we're trying to front load a lot of them so that we can expedite getting them fixed, especially those in the inundation zone. We haven't. In fact, at one point I was going to go to the Governor and say, give me an emergency .. so I can just contract, single source contract, fix auto sirens. That got shot down by the ....

So, so we're going through the process and we're working with, with DAGS so that we can front load those sirens that we need fixed in an inundation zone. Because yeah, we recognize that there are some sirens that have been broken for a long time. But it's, it's working the system and getting, I think a better working relationship on the sirens, on the funding into DAGS.

Now the sirens are just one part of the communication system in the event when an active emergency is going. So I have been somewhat confused and if you can clarify, there are different alert programs. Is there a different alert text system for each county? And then does the HIEMA ever send out any text alerts as well? If you can speak to both of those?

Yeah. So every county has their alert system. So for example, Talmadge will use Everbridge. They push out Everbridge. Maui just started with his Genesis. Kauai and Elton will use WINS. And then Oahu just stood up their H&L alert. So those are county messaging platforms. At the, at the state level we do have the wireless emergency alerts.

So the WEA and then we, we also have the EAS, which the counties also have access to. So we both have access to this. So what happened during the tsunami was the state warning point pushed out the WEA and the EAS. So the messaging that came out on the TV and to your cell phone was from the state warning point. And then the counties would follow up from their platform just to their population, their messaging. And then, so, so we use this, these systems. What we also used during the tsunami was the Civil Air Patrol.

Knowing that some of our sirens were broken on the coastline. We have a standing agreement with the Civil Air Patrol that during a tsunami they would go out and use their aircraft, fly along the coastline and make announcements off the loudspeakers that were we're in a warning and they need to evacuate.

Oh, wow. So for the text alerts, I can recall on the recent wildfire, when it was hitting Nanakuli, I was sitting in traffic and my phone went off. It wasn't Honolulu alerts, I think. Or was it. Was it for wildfires that were happening in Representative Keela's district?

I would have to go back and look at what went out.

Yeah.

Okay.

Because. And I don't. And so is the advice to all residents in the state: one, you need to sign up for your county alerts?

Yes.

And then do you have to sign up for WEA and EAS, or is that automatic?

No, that'll be automatic. But the. The county ones, you have to go in and sign up for.

Okay. And then I guess that's what I was. It was sort of interesting as I watched some of the wildfires that were occurring out in Waianae in the Leeward coast. And this goes to communication, right. We were getting. We weren't getting a lot of text messages, and I was concerned about, you know, family and friends out there.

And then honestly, the most messaging was coming from Representatives and Senators and Council Members who were on their, like, social media. And I applaud them. I applaud those Representatives for doing all that. But is there not a better way to have gotten more information out? And that might not be a fair question to you. Maybe that is a question to each county's Emergency Management Department.

Well, part of it, too is like for Maui's Genesis. If there's a fire here and you're in the zones, you'll get the message. If you live over here, you'll not going to get the message. So with their platforms, they can geofence and just put the message out to those. Those folks.

Okay, well, now I'll need to check with my colleagues because I felt like they were the ones sending out the messages and maybe we were geofenced out of it. But I will tell you, I mean, I think some of my colleagues are concerned that there's not enough communication in their own districts and they got to go out there and give them information themselves. And I just think that's commendable, but also just not. It didn't seem like there was enough information going on about the wildfires at the time. I could be wrong.

You know, as Chair Belatti was mentioning the text alerts, the thought came to me is you're driving and, you know, you're not supposed to be looking at your phone so the text comes out. So is there like a maybe an audio or something that it would just state the warning, you know, audio, so you don't have to, like, look at your phone when you're driving. Right. Not supposed to do that. Right? Don't do that.

I wasn't looking at it. It buzzed and it just shook. And I was like, what's going on? And I was in the middle of traffic. I'm like, whoa. Okay.

So most of the new cars, if you have your wireless connected to the system, will come out over the radio. It'll read the text for you. I don't know if everybody has that kind of system set up. You can set your phones up for that, too.

Can I ask about the WEA and the eas? I understand that that's. Is that a collaboration with private industry to get that information out as well?

No, it's a, it's part of the, the FEMA program. So it's, it's a nationwide program.

Okay, but doesn't it involve radio and TV? So. So what you see on your phone will pop up on TV and radio.

The banner that goes across. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. And how do we test those systems as well, those alert systems?

You'll get every first of the month when we run the siren, the, the EAs will go off and you'll, you'll see that on there. Yeah.

Okay. Okay.

I want to open up to questions to any of the three. Yes. Talmage. zero, you're lucky. You're not going to have any questions. Maybe. Representative well, I'm gonna. So if there's no further question, I guess one last question and this kind of. I want to make the connection between the mitigation planning and current planning and moving forward.

So the counties have submitted their mitigation plans to FEMA and they've been approved. Is it. What's the process of. What's the status of that?

Director I can see exactly where the counties are. I think DM got. They did the joint review and that one is signed Kauai. It wasn't up yet. I think Maui is getting close and I'm not sure where Hawaii. I got to go look. Exactly. We're in the pipeline.

Okay. And then because we had this site visit with female One of the last ask. So I'm going to ask you here. Sorry. Administrator. They really were emphasizing the need for communication and testing and exercising. I forget what he called it. Running crisis management exercises and that we had all the right people around in this site visit.

Is that in alignment? Let me back up. What he was asking and saying is that we're in this planning process now and that we have this opportunity because there are some new things that they now have here. And how do we upload that? Also we all know we all have the same understanding of what's here.

And then how do we test that? I think that's what he was asking us. Is that going to be in alignment? That kind of coordination, reassessment, analyzing and then prioritizing, is that all going to be part of this 2027 kind of one exercise thing that you want to do?

Yes. So right now we're going through our initial review for our catastrophic plan. That's the catastrophic plan with FEMA. Actually not with FEMA yet, but we just got word that FEMA Region 9 did get funding for them to support our during the calendar year of 2026 for us to review the entire plan.

So right now what we'll do is we're doing our initial look at it. We'll sit down with them probably around February to start that process and go through our entire CAT plan or catastrophic.

Plan for the entire state.

For the entire state, yes.

Okay.

And then what we want to do is we want, we wanna take what we do in 26 in that catastrophic plan and now exercise it in 2027. And then after 2027 we see, okay, maybe this worked. This didn't work. We need to add this. So we're trying to kind of just continue the loop with the planning.

Okay, can I. And just because it was mentioned that you wanna see the community be part of this kind of exercise process.

Yes.

I don't know if FEMA has it in its capabilities to kind of figure out ways to integrate more community based things, but if we can do that, I think that would be a strength.

I'm not looking to FEMA to integrate them. It's the state will we integrate them?

But then when we exercise, then we exercise with the community because like if, you know, again, the more we practice as a community, the better we get and then we help more people in the event of an emergency. So I think I have all my, I don't always have all my questions answered.

I have more questions every time I read something new. So I think this is a continuation of a conversation. I do know that we can dig more deeply into what each communities are doing in their HRPs. And so that might be for a future briefing. I want to leave our presenters with a few comments.

You guys can make some closing remarks and then Representative Shimizu please, if you want to close and then we'll just adjourn. I will give it first to Talmage. Since you have been off the. Do you want to.

Or you can have a few minutes, think about what you want to say I'm going to throw it to Director Sniffen. He's always good on his feet. So, closing remarks. Director Sniffen.

Thank you, Chair. Really appreciate you inviting us here and with the right people in place with the state and the counties who run the emergency management throughout. For me, my closing remarks would be to the public. Really appreciate. First, the Lahore that was shown during the evacuation during that time.

I cannot understate how amazing that was. That we didn't have any incidents, accidents, crashes or road rages during that time was absolutely amazing. I would also ask the community to start making sure that they're part of this planning process. We all got to have our own plans as a family.

We got to know where we're going to be meeting, where we're going to be evacuating to so we can make sure that we can trust that we're going to see each other again in those areas and we're going to be helping you.

We're making sure that on the state side we're setting our plans to ensure that you can be incorporated in it. So I'm looking forward to working with this Committee, with the Legislature and with the community to ensure that we get to that plan. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to turn it to Administrator Magno now and then we'll conclude with Administrator Barros.

Well, thank you for the opportunity. This is good discussion and good to listen to the other administrators and directors as well, and they were spot on. You know, as far as the tsunami, I think all of our objectives were met as far as getting people out.

We got a lot of work to do on it and it started already with our After Action Review. So, you know, we'll get better on that.

You can kind of see with the discussion that when I talked about the mitigation, how it ties into the discussion with the wildfire and the tsunamis here and all disasters that we, we look at. And I'll put a plug in, you know, our cycle basically here in Hawaii County, you talking about tsunami awareness and so forth.

April is Tsunami Awareness Month. You know, we, we talk about disasters all year long. But then at certain times of the year, January is Volcano Awareness Month. So we put a big focus on that to the public with Hawaii Volcano Observatory. We work that up.

April is with the museum as Administrator Barros talked about the Pacific Museum, Pacific Tsunami Museum. We work with them, outreach to all the community as far as tsunami. So there's opportunity year round plus those focus months to get the information out. But thank you for the opportunity today.

And I hope you can use my notes with your guys information as far as mitigation understanding. Thanks.

Thank you administrator. And thank you for taking your time out of your your busy schedule and joining us from the neighbor island. It's always, always important to me that we have voices from throughout our state. And then on that note, Administrator Barros Chair.

Appreciate the opportunity to talk to the Committee like I started. I. I think Hawaii is in a very unique position that we can learn from other island nations and we can be this center that pulls this lessons learned and the scientists, the emergency managers, the first responders here and become the center of excellence for emergency management.

Thank you, Representative Shimizu. Any last comments?

I just want to thank you Chair for arranging this. Thank you for the presenters and I'm just so proud of the people that represent us and of the effort that you are doing. And I have the highest respect for all of you and thank you for your service to our community.

Again, I want to extend my thanks to the presenters. We have so much work to do. I know communities are concerned, they're worried about their families. And so I guess I would emphasize the message that we just have to keep practicing, preparing and learning. Learning every time from some mistakes that might have been we experienced.

Understanding what areas are weak and then how we can improve it. I really appreciate the more proactive nature of this because we have to get ahead of these kinds of emergencies. On that note, thank you all and we are adjourned.