Work With Your Neighbors on Disaster Preparation

During a meeting of the Ko`olauloa Neighborhood Board, a community member asked board member Dotty Kelly-Paddock, how Hau`ula would respond if a disaster like a hurricane or tsunami struck the area.

Kelly-Paddock admitted she didn’t know. Neither did anyone else.

Ko`olauloa, which includes Hau`ula and other Northshore Windward communities, is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. Kamehameha Highway, the only road that connects the communities to the rest of O`ahu, is likely to be impassable after a tsunami or significant storm. In addition, all the concrete government buildings in the community are near the ocean and cannot serve as disaster shelters.

When Kelly-Paddock found out that there was not a realistic plan for Hau`ula residents to survive a disaster, she created one. Kelly-Paddock knew kupuna were the most vulnerable in a disaster so she organized her neighbors and identified where kupuna lived so that someone would check on older and disabled residents during an evacuation. She identified high ground on state land that would be a safe place to survive a storm surge or tsunami. She recruited volunteers and began holding regular meetings to talk about how to survive disasters and created plans and lobbied for funding for a disaster resilience hub on the high ground to house medical and other services and be a shelter in an emergency.

As hurricane seasons begins in the Central Pacific and we think about lessons learned in the wake of the Maui wildfires, AARP Hawai`i encourages government, community leaders and individuals to be better prepared for the next disaster and to address the needs of vulnerable populations such as older adults, people with disabilities, residents of long-term care facilities and other congregate housing, low-income communities, older immigrants who do not speak English as a first language and other communities of color.

The Legislature took initial steps in that direction by reinstating the state Fire Marshall’s office and adding a translator position to the Hawai`i Emergency Management Agency. We encourage the next Legislature to do more and not lose focus on the importance of disaster mitigation and preparedness. This is a long term and ongoing process cannot be addressed as a one off.

The next disaster may be a wildfire or it may be a tsunami, hurricane, mass power outage or even an earthquake. We must do as much as we can to protect our kupuna, who are the most likely to perish or be seriously injured in disasters. AARP has a planning document, developed with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It’s available at aarp.org/disasterresilience. Information on preparing a personal disaster plan is available at aarp.org/home-family/your-home/disaster-preparedness.html

We believe that a revised Crisis Standards of Care, a planning document developed in case health care needed to be rationed, should be publicly released. A task force worked on the document after the pandemic, but the revised Crisis Standards of Care has not been made publicly available to-date. The new Crisis Standards of Care ensures age is no longer a determinant to prioritizing access to necessary lifesaving services and it deserves to be recognized and promoted.

AARP Hawai`i urges everyone, especially caregivers and kupuna, to make sure they have a personal disaster plan. Neighborhood leaders need to ask themselves if their community – whether apartment buildings, townhouses, or single-family homes -- have a community plan to survive a disaster and its aftermath.

If the answer is no, they should work to be like Hau`ula and other communities that have become disaster resilient. State and local governments should help communities help themselves, and programs to create more disaster resilient communities should be fully funded.

Keali‘i Lopez is the state director of AARP Hawaii, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization dedicated to empowering Americans 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. Her career spans more than three decades and includes executive and leadership positions in government, non-profit and business organizations.

This article originally appeared in civilbeat.org