Flooding on Upper Waikoloa Rd

[Carey]

Flooding has closed Waikaloa Rd from the Upper Highway to Waikaloa Village this afternoon (4:30 pm 2/11)

[dirk1609]

And some pics
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee284...G_0109.jpg
http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee284...G_0104.jpg

[missydog1]

yep, and I was driving through it ...
one of the hairiest drives I've done on this island this afternoon ..
couldn't really turn around at a certain point as it was no better behind me.
The police and county were showing up and I was trying to get through while it was still possible.

Lightning, thunder, white out rain, streams springing up, mud, gravel, it was crazy.
[:0]

The crazy part was I had my radio on switching channels trying to find something anything to tell me how widespread or serious the conditions were and there was nothing.
KAPA's news at 4:55 didn't even mention it.
Damon, I was definitely thinking the Civil Defense should have been on the radio, interrupting programming. There were LOTS of drivers caught in this thing and many not knowing what to do, go forward, stop, it was confusing.

I kept the advice in mind not to cross fast flowing streams, but at that time the streams were starting to spring up everywhere but the water on the road was still more like a big puddle than a stream, and I have a 4WD, so I forged through it.

http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/articles/...reak10.txt

[Carey]

The CD was having some problems with their communication systems & it was posted online sites...

[Guest]

quote:

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Originally posted by Carey

The CD was having some problems with their communication systems & it was posted online sites...

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Where was it posted?

I was looking?

Still even today... the Official Civil Defense site hasn't been updated since Oct. 4th, 2008?

http://co.hawaii.hi.us/cd/message.htm

Damon Tucker's Weblog

[Carey]

Damon, I got an email from the school alert system... not sure where else it was posted...

[Guest]

Carey -

Can you possibly forward that to me if you didn't delete it yet: damontucker @ yahoo.com

I'm not real happy about the county about to spend $40,000 ANNUALLY for a phone alert system that I don't think will work.

Email is free and there are much better uses of the $40,000 each year.

I'm assuming that you had to be a student or faculty to get that email?

I'm an alumni and get alumni mail... I did not receive any sort of warning like current faculty or students did.

I just fired a letter off to the county asking about yesterdays response.

Mahalo!

Damon Tucker's Weblog

[missydog1]

well neither email nor phone alert would have helped me or the other people stuck on the road. The storm came on so fast ... I had only left my son's house five minutes prior and everything looked fine. It wasn't even raining. My son had just left for the golf course. The weather changed on a dime.

I found myself in a flash flood situation and what I needed was information to be on the RADIO. And it wasn't. Unless it was on the AM, which I suppose it could have been, but my radio is set on FM and it was hard enough switching channels in those hairy driving conditions without switching to alternate bandwidths. (I forget that AM exists ...)

I think there may have been people who could have been reached by phone or email, but most driving into it were already in motion or somehow out and about, tourists coming down the hill from day trips, people coming home from work, etc.. It's 30 minutes to an hour between towns on those stretches of road, so for example, some cars hitting flooding on the upper highway may have left Kona half hour before there was reason to send a warning.

RADIO ... interrupt programming and tell people what to do.

[Guest]

Twitter to all cell phones.

Pictures/locations/escape routes/ and the ability for feedback on the scene of other locations.

Free and can be done from anywhere at anytime... don't need the internet, will work during power outages...

And probably just as many people have cell phones as they do radios that would work during an emergency (if not more). (Have people checked the batteries in your emergency radio... or do you even have one?)

By the way... just noticed the Hawaii Civil Defense Does have a Twitter site up... but whomever is running it at the moment is obviously not very proficient as the last update was in January:

http://twitter.com/Civil_Defense

I do recommend everyone get onto twitter ASAP.

@damontucker

Either stay in the 90's world of email/radio/and phones... or get in to the digital era with Twitter.

It is FREE... I don't know why anyone wouldn't?

www.twitter.com

Damon Tucker's Weblog