Last week, you might have heard your cell phones ringing when the federal government tested messaging capabilities through the national emergency alert system.

Both our local Hawaii and national government have the capability to send a notification to everyone with a cell phone, regardless of whether their devices are on “silent” mode or not.

But when it comes to emergencies that require evacuation or shelter, the biggest problem we face in most cases is not whether the government can get a message to you. The real question is, when citizens get told to leave or seek shelter, how many of us know where to go or what to do?

Oahu leaders should consider how during the Maui wildfires confusion over what to do complicated the crisis. In preparing Oahu for disaster situations, both emergency authorities and citizens need to have simple, clear, rehearsed expectations of where to go and what to do, so that if it ever comes to evacuation or shelter seeking, we don’t devolve into total chaos.

During the Maui wildfires, authorities were concerned about citizens using tsunami evacuation routes and “running into” the fires. Some citizens were distressed with traffic pile-ups, and decided to take matters into their own hands and they drove their cars on sidewalks, across lawns, and through parking lots to escape. Other individuals simply ran wherever they could, and for some, that proved fatal.

Here on Oahu, we got a taste of how disordered things could get when in 2018, a false alert about a missile attack went to residents. When people don’t have training or expectation of what to do and where to go, fear and chaos is free to reign.

Ask yourself, how many of you right now if you were told to evacuate from a fire, or seek shelter from a real missile attack, would actually know what to do without breaking the law or taking things into your own hands?

If I were the mayor of Honolulu, the first thing I would do right now would be to create a website that lists the location of various shelters or safe areas for different contingencies, along with either evacuation routes or directions to pre-determined mass transit evacuation pick-up points.

Just like people can routinely go to vaccines.gov and instantly find where they can get a certain type of shot, people should be able to go to a local city website and be able to find out things like where a shelter is or what route they should take to get out of danger, and this should be widely promoted and made common public knowledge. 

Ideally, this should also be supplemented with signs on the streets or even color-coded strips on the streets telling people where to go.  The city could also put out a request for information for the development of a mobile application for residents that could map them an escape route or assign someone to a shelter in an emergency.

We need to have a system where citizens already have a mental model of what is expected of them in an emergency, so they can get out of danger in a calm, or at least orderly, way.

We need to have the preparedness and education so that when these things happen, people have options to take and knowledge they can lean on.

Another key part of citizen preparedness is giving them advance indications and warnings, or “I&W,” of what’s going on with regards to Honolulu’s public safety. Of course, not everyone has a cell phone. Not everyone has access to social media and the internet. And sadly, not everyone reads or watches the news, and many of these won’t know something bad is happening until it’s too late. So how do we reach those individuals?

While this might require legislation from either the City Council or the Legislature, one thing we may wish to do is create large solar-powered digital billboards in certain densely populated parts of Honolulu that can display high-resolution images, not just text, that can cycle through slides of important government information. (They could also play video and audio, optionally.)

Though some people may argue something like this might be a little too “cyberpunk” for Honolulu, they would serve the useful aim of ensuring everyone can see, and if necessary, hear updates from authorities on a constant basis, both before and during a crisis or disaster situation. If I were a tourist and in Waikiki, having a large digital billboard with video and audio where a message comes on telling me to evacuate and what routes to take, for example, would be a life-saver.

The time is now to start preparing our city and our population. While we may not like to think about disasters or emergencies, we need to have the preparedness and education so that when these things happen, people have options to take and knowledge they can lean on. 

Oahu should consider itself fortunate that so far, we have not had to deal with something requiring large scale evacuation or shelter-seeking, but we should never assume that will always be the case.

Should that moment come, we should be so ready that when the mayor of Honolulu has to issue an alert, rather than chaos ensuing, they can be told by their staff, “Sir, everyone is where they need to be. You prepared us well.”