Head start for hurricane season

– Federal emergency managers got an unusual head start preparing for Hurricane Lane, with key personnel and supplies deployed well ahead of the storm in response to a flurry of disaster threats to Hawaii in recent months.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) had already established an operational presence on Oahu and Kauai after widespread flooding across those islands in April, and on Hawaii’s Big Island during the eruption of Kilauea Volcano that began in May.

Fema started moving additional supplies to Hawaii again in advance of Hurricane Hector, which skirted past the Pacific US archipelago state more than a week ago, said agency spokesperson Veronica Verde.

“We have already shipped meals-ready-to-eat, and also water and generators to all four [Hawaii] counties and prepositioned them for Hector” in distribution centres, with more provisions set to arrive ahead of Lane, she said.

Fema is also following a revised play book in the aftermath of catastrophic damage and loss of life wreaked by Hurricane Maria last year in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, according to Fema chief Brock Long.

The strategy calls for getting generators in place before the storm hits so they can immediately restore electricity for basic needs, including power to restart local water systems, said Long.

“It’s not just providing food and water. If you fix the power first, you solve 90% of the problems,” Long said.

Verde said Fema has also “pushed more of our commodities forward in preparation for this hurricane” than it has in the past.

Fema was harshly criticized in the wake of Maria as having been too slow to recognise the gravity of the devastation to Puerto Rico and too sluggish in providing disaster relief to the Caribbean island.

For Lane, which had threatened for days to become the first major hurricane to plow directly through the Hawaiian islands since 1992, Fema “embedded” its own liaison officers in the emergency operations centres of state and local authorities for close coordination.

Fema has also sent in urban search-and-rescue teams.