Zoning & Planning - Special Meeting

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hey, hey. Good afternoon everyone. Everyone, will the committee on executive management please come to order? Noting the presence of council members wire, Kia, Cordiero, Okimoto, and Nishimoto. And I believe council member Tupola will be joining us shortly um remotely. I have to make a preliminary announcement. Pursuant to section 92-3.7, the Hawaii vice statutes, this meeting will be conducted as a remote meeting by interactive conference technology with the following procedures in effect for the meeting. Members of the public will be allowed to provide oral testimony on all items on the agenda in person in the council chamber and remotely when each agenda item is taken up. as both English and Hawaiian are official languages of the state of Hawaii pursuant to article 15 section 4 of the Hawaii vice excuse me the Hawaii state constitution and section 1-13 of the Hawaii vice statutes members of the public may testify in either language for oral testimonies offered in Olelo Hawaii additional time as may be necessary will be allowed for the testifier to provide an English translation for their testimony for testifying each person shall shall state their name. Each speaker may not have anyone else read their statement and is limited to a one minute presentation on each item. Once in-person testimony has concluded, I will proceed to those who have registered to testify remotely by video conference. When your name is called,

please monitor your screen and activate your audio feed when prompted. I will then give persons who have not registered an opportunity to offer testimony. Please utilize the raise hand feature in Zoom to be called on. For those joining us by telephone only, please press star 9 to indicate your desire to speak. I will identify you by the last three digits of your phone number. When your number is called, please press star six to unmute yourself when prompted. Some friendly reminders and tips. Video conference from a quiet location if possible. If you are also watching the proceeding on OLO, please mute your television at the time you are called to testify. When the timer on the screen reaches zero, please conclude your remarks promptly. HR section 92-3.7 requires all votes at remote meetings to be conducted by a roll call unless unanimous. Therefore, I will first call for objections and if there are any, I will call for a roll call vote. For those council members participating from the outside of the council chamber, in accordance with HRS section 92-3.7, the meeting will automatically recess if we lose audiovisisual contact with you and cannot reconvene until we reestablish contact. Therefore, please announce before if you will be voluntary signing out of the meeting. Written testimonies, including the testifier's address, email address, and telephone number will be available to the public as described on the posted agenda. As a courtesy, please turn off all cell phones. Members, how I want to proceed is I I do have an opening statement. I wanted to turn it over to council members wire, Tupola, and Nishimoto if they'd like to give an opening statement as well as their districts were most impacted by the Kona storm. Um, then I'd like to turn over to the managing director and or the mayor if you want to make an opening statement and then we can follow

up by questions and then turn it over to the public for testimony. So, thank you everyone for being here today. I want to open by sending a heartfelt mahalo from the council to the countless volunteers, community leaders, organizers, and the frontline workers whose swift action in the early morning hours of March 20th prevented any loss of life during the unprecedented flooding we saw across the island. The community-led response immediately followed the floods was awe inspiring and a testament to the strength of our people. I also want to thank my colleagues who have been spending considerable amount of time in their impacted communities. Council member Wire Tupola and Nishimoto in particular. We understand the need to be present in our communities at this time and the challenge that it creates in completing our regular business. So, thank you for making the time to be here today. The primary focus of this initial meeting is to set clear expectations for the city as we move forward in our collective response to this disaster. It is my hope that this will provide additional clarity for both the public and this body as it relates to the who, what, and when of the city response. By the end of this hearing, we should have a clear understanding of the timeline, the chain of command, agency coordination, and the points where the city's response may require additional attention and resources. Before I turn it over to the managing director, I'd like to offer Council Member Wire, would you like to make opening statement?

Um, thank you, chair, and thank you for convening this meeting. Um, I imagine it's going to be one of many conversations that we'll be having both through the budget process and just as an island community, uh, about how to improve and meet the needs of the community. And I know you're going to hear from a lot of voices today from those that were, um, saving lives and are still doing work down in the community um to those trapped um, in their home because they couldn't evacuate by the time they got the information about what they needed to do. and you know others that have experiences from across the entire district, a very broad and diverse district. And so I'm going to have a lot of questions and I'm going to let their voices speak for themselves today. And so want to similarly mahalo um everyone that has just outpoured aloha and love to the entire community at all levels from those on the ground working in the mud, working in our streams, pulling people out, saving people. um continue to provide services um that includes city staff and employees as well to this day. And I know that the recovery ahead uh is not something that's going to happen overnight. Uh and so I look forward to this body um working with the community and elevating their needs and what they want to see uh to both ensure we make improvements um so some of the missteps that happen don't happen again and also to ensure that we provide a path and a brighter future for the community. So, chair,

thank you. Council member Tupola, in accordance with section 92-3.7 of the Hawaii Vice Statutes, please identify each person who is with you at your location and then please proceed.

Aloha chair, aloha council members and community members. There is no one with me right now and I thank you chair for convening this meeting and for the time. Over the past several weeks, communities across Aahu, especially on the west side northshore, have experienced and uh east Honolulu, have experienced real hardship. Homes flooded, families displaced, and in many cases uncertainty about what comes next. I want to acknowledge our first responders, city departments, and community partners who stepped up often under difficult and rapidly changing conditions. Their commitment does not go unnoticed. Specifically in my community, I've been working with the following state and city agencies, HFD, DPR, EMV, DFM, DOT, and even HEO. At the same time, we're hearing clearly from our communities. There were gaps in response, communication, and coordination. Some felt the response was too slow. I'm interested to hear directly from DEM and Director Collins because I haven't seen them in my community or received any direct information, but that doesn't mean that they weren't working or moving pieces. I'm open to learning how they were moving and what was working and what roles they were playing. Our office has been on the ground as well as many of my colleagues speaking directly with residents, coordinating outreach, setting up hubs, pumping streams, pumping streets, helping people connect to resources and seeing the strength of our communities. We must strengthen our emergency preparedness communication, improve interdep departmental coordination, and ensure resources reach people faster and more effectively. I hope today we can focus on accountability, heightened communication this week and in the weeks coming and a lot of solutions. We remain committed to doing that and working together with the administration and the council. Mahalo.

Thank you, Council Member Nish. I'd like to make opening statement. Thank you. I just have a brief statement. I um you know, it's been a tough couple weeks for all of us. Um but it really has shown the best of what Hawaii is. Um, it's shown that government, nonprofits, and community members can come together for the better of our community. Um, I hope we can hear from how we can improve on that at this hearing, but I really want to thank um all those groups for coming together and really pulling us out of this tough couple weeks.

Thank you. Next, I'd like to call Mike Forby. Would you like to start us off with opening statement? Thank you very much for being here. I also like to acknowledge that uh mayor is here, Mayor Blanchard. Hello, mayor. We also have the mayor of Kauaii, Derek Kawakami. Thank you for joining us and thank you for your help also with um with this flood, the director of department of emergency management and the deputy managing director. So, thank you all for being here. Thank you, Mayor uh managing director, council chair, committee chair waters, and council members. Good afternoon. Mike Formbby, managing director. Um, I did want to offer perhaps Mayor Blangiardi and Mayor Kawakami an opportunity to make an early statement because Mayor Kawakami is here because they have assets and resources down in the EOC. And we are still in an active EOC operation at a lower level, not at level one, but at a lower level. And I'll explain that in more detail as we go along. But Mayor Kawakami has been the beneficiary of assistance from Aahu in the past and he was very quick to offer experienced assistance from Kauaii in flooding scenarios to us. And the two of them are going to be actually out in the field on the Northshore as soon as they can break away from this meeting. So I'm going to ask the two of them if they would like to come up first and offer comments. Uh, aloha, council chair and um, council members. Uh, Derek Kawakami, mayor, Connie of Kauaii. I wasn't anticipating to be in front of you today, but I'm

truly truly honored. Um, I am here because we have our team from Kauaii that is onboarded and deployed with your EOC and your IMT. In fact, some of our folks are um getting acclimated with the team from South Carolina as we speak. Um, I I got to tip my hat off to Mayor Blangiardi. Um, he was very quick to assess the situation and reach out to ask for assistance. And I will tell you this, looking from the outside in, if there is one thing that speaks volumes about a community is its response to the darkest of their hours. And I will tell you, I am so proud of the people of Oahu. I mean, you talk about a community that is resilient, that is rugged, and ready to get down and help each other out in its darkest of hours. What I have been able to witness from the outside in is nothing short of phenomenal. We have tough communities out there. And it makes my heart smile. And I am an outsider letting you folks know how lucky you folks are to have tough communities that are willing to be neighbors when they need it the most. We have been waiting from 2018 to be able to return the favor that we received when Kauaii was hit with one of the worst storms of our life. And we never forget who was there for us. And our folks were chomping at the bit to say thank you so much for helping us out back then. We have some of the very best and experience that were out in Maui assisting. As soon as mayor reached out, I talked to them. They said, "Give us a couple days. We're leaving Maui. We got

to kiss our wives and our husbands goodbye again, but we want to return the favor." And they're out here with your team. And I have to say, you folks have a wonderful team um to manage this situation. To all of the council members, I want to thank you folks for being out there in your community when your community needs it the most. to all of the community members that were out there responding as soon as things happen. Words cannot express the feeling that I have in my heart on how quickly you guys can respond. and to all of the first responder communities here. Coming from an island that is no stranger to natural disasters and adversity, your folks first responder team in that community, including the dispatchers, are all heroes and they're willing to grind away. Chair and council members, I'm here to make a commitment that as long as you folks need help, we will have a team cycling in and out until we're all out of this. And that is a beautiful thing about living in a state like Hawaii. We may be separated by water, but we're all connected hearttoheart. And I want to thank mayor and I want to thank all of you for the honor, the privilege, and the opportunity to help you folks out. Thank you so very much, council chair. Thank you, council members. Good afternoon, chair, council members. First of all, I want to start off by acknowledging Mayor Kawakami. If he thinks I was quick to ask, he was even quicker to say yes. And for that, we're deeply grateful. Um, you know, this has been a tough tough couple of weeks. So, I just want to set um a little chronology, if you will. 15 days ago, week ago, two weeks ago, last night, we held a press conference over at the EOC

because we had known about the Konelo coming up and moving. In fact, for the prior four or five days, we had begun trying to clean streams in different places. Um, and we went into that with anticipation that this was going to be something pretty significant because the radar screens were showing us that. Two nights later, Thursday night, it had already begun. It already started in Kawaii, but it was really hard to tell here in Oahu the way the storm was behaving. It was um was unpredictable if it were. We were getting some rain in some places and whatever. And the long and the short of it is by Friday night uh it had it it would really began to put a lot of pressure on and that night I was on the phone with the governor with the folks from DNR trying to decide whether or not we were going to evacuate Wua and it was all tied to the dam and even in a subsequent press conference last week the Saturday night after that the mayor said he thought that was those were the most harrowing moments and we got through the first Kona low and we didn't have to evacuate the dams held although they had gone as high as 85 ft and and we were really close but we were battling with whether or not we should evacuate in the middle of the night or what we had a need to and there was a lot of rain coming down so we thought we got through that storm in fact the very next night on that Saturday is when we deactivated the EOC we had we had closed the we were closing the shelters we had three families in Nanakuli we got all of them placed we worked it out we thought the worst was behind us because the prediction for the second Kona low was that it would not be as bad. All the experts were saying that in fact the National Weather Service as well as our local forecasters that it would bring with it rain. And if anything the concern was that we knew from the first Kona low which I went on the air saying at that time we're predicting between 15 and 30 inches of rain within 3 days. And that seemed to be an extraordinary announcement to make. And sure enough,

we got that. But everything held up, but the ground was really saturated and the reservoirs were full and so were the streams. But we didn't we weren't incurring the kind of damage at that point. We thought, as I said, the worst was behind us even though we know it was a lot of water. So what happened very quickly after that was the second conalo proved to be um very different. And in fact, while we were concerned about every inch of rain that was falling at that time, knowing full well the grounds were saturated, we kept an eye on the dams. Things were under control. Um, and then uh that Thursday night, a week ago tomorrow night, the National Weather Service was telling us that we can anticipate 2 to three inches of rain over the next 8 to 10 hours. I went to bed that night believing that, concerned, but also knew that we had the dams under control and we didn't have the kind of flooding that obviously was about to take place. The event of having 10 inches of rain in less than three hours created the kind of havoc, if you will, and destruction that we've all seen and witnessed. And certainly with the impact on Wua um and across the board, it was an islandwide event and we're certainly very aware of the Windwood side and Kahuku Le everywhere. That was something that um you know in in it's just the very fact that we've had nobody die and the community itself out there was incredible and the rescues and we were out we were out there to hear that firsthand but so were our first responders. There was a lot of heroic acts and the fact that we rescued and I mean by rescue by definition people who

were in a life or death situation not just somebody you helped out 233 people and no one died not one capuna not one kid not one kind of situation that you typically see I don't know if you saw the flash floods that happened in Texas just last week afterwards they lost 27 people you know in a flash flood in a place like that in Texas you would think be so open but in this community so that that was something that um we really just couldn't prepare for. All we could do is respond to it as best we could. And I was there Saturday morning after after we were trying to assess damage on Friday morning. In fact, this trip out to Wua this afternoon will be my sixth time out there in the last 12 days calibrating our success in our recovery efforts every 48 hours firsthand. And I know that our response or our response to that um has been excellent and I prepare I want Mike to talk about that today and I'll answer any questions anybody has but I know how much we've put into it and I can tell you uh that on Monday we were back out there and and six days later from what we saw um from that neighborhood board meeting to what was actually already accomplished has been pretty remarkable. We're now at 80% of the cleanup. We expect to be f done by early next week. But I want to I want to talk about one other thing tied to this that that second colonel low and that's what happened in Monoa because in the middle of the afternoon with nothing from the National Weather Service by the way they didn't even predict that. that wasn't even on their radar screens in the middle of the afternoon with the sun shining actually late morning mid midday what happened at Monoa was another rain bomb not quite as extensive but I talked about it so I met with the principal of noani the the

morning after and he said he's a surfer and he said you know I saw the water coming over the stream I jumped in went to change take my pants off get my board shots shorts on said by the time I got done it didn't even take me two minutes we were flooded there was a river coming through and loaded up the cafeteria today today on the front page of the paper there's a Hokani the other school there is now closed for the remainder of the year and you can see the damage there and that happened with absolutely no warning so what I'm trying to temper here is we had two experiences that were you use the word chair unprecedented they really were these rain experiences unlike if If I go back to 82 and 92 with the hurricanes, okay, those were really bad and I saw those firsthand. But this stuff here was something that was only wildly unpredictable. We had no warning on it. Ne neither time really. I'm not here to point fingers, but that's the truth. And I'm on record of saying though what we did see before the first stone on the second press conference that Thursday night before the Friday of say in the first conolo I was asked by a reporter in the room you know how do you know this is even real because the storm hadn't really begun to manifest itself and seem seemingly got by Kawaii pretty good and that we were we were in a trying to hype every they were accusing us of sort of hyping this thing where we were trying to do is prepare the community. And I told him that night, and it's all in video, it's whatever. I said, "I've been looking at radar screens for over 40 years." My bad my broadcast background. I have never seen a system like this. I actually said, "I think we're about to see something we've never seen before." And I stand by that. I don't I can't go back a hundred years ago or whatever else, but I would tell you what we experienced, we had never seen before. We ourselves didn't have the warning for it. We tried to prepare for it as best we could through Konolo one. and then

certainly the surprises of Konolo 2 and since that time we've tried to respond to it in the best and most intelligent way we possibly can and we've thrown everything at it and I feel really proud of that and I'll be interested to hear what some community members have to say. Um, but we went out to that that neighborhood board meeting that night to listen and we listened and by the next day we were delivering on all that checklist of what people needed and we've continued to prior to provide that. But these were storms of a different kind. And I know it's easy and look everybody can Monday morning quarterback and can we get better? Yeah. Is there room for improvements? Yes. Should we absolutely learn from the lessons that we just went through? Absolutely. So, I don't even want to sound like we're being defensive, and I'm not even making excuses for anything. We've tried to respond to something that we we didn't really know was coming to the best of our ability in the best way we could. And I think our response since that time, as I said, has been excellent. So, I just want to set the record there and let Michael talk about the rest of it. Um, do we hurt for the people? Yeah. I'm just I'm gonna say it again. no debts, nobody dying. The situation we now face is just a question of time and money. We can fix everything on a going forward basis. And and and and that's where we're at. So I u we hold a great responsibility in this job. Okay. And I I think that we we believe that um we've done all the right stuff. Uh, and since and since and after that event, um, I'm very proud of the work that's been done. So, I'll let Michael take it from here. Thank you, mayors. Uh, chair, I'll try to be brief. I just want to give a little bit of information uh, to the community and to the council and to the

community that's here today. Thank you. We're here to listen and to learn. I did want to note that because we're still in an active EOC um we have not done an afteraction report and that will come. The value of an afteraction report is that you take all the data that's available over many days and it paints a picture and there are shifts that come into the EOC. So there are people that are there during the day that are not there at night and they don't have the opportunity to compare notes until after the fact and it paints a fuller picture when everybody sits down after the fact and they go through day by day, hour by hour. They look at the weather forecast. They look at the alerts that went out. They look at the readings they had at the dams and the reservoirs. They look at stream levels. They look at the support they were getting from Haima. And they put all that together. And I'm I'm here to tell you from having done it before, it paints a pretty accurate picture. And that's when you begin to self assess and to look at yourself and say, "This is where we were remiss and we can do better and this is where we did well." And so we haven't had a chance to do that yet because we still have people down in the EOC in the debris removal mode, processing mode. And just this morning, working with the Kauawaii EOC members, we talked about the fact that now that we're about 80% recovery, which means recovery of debris, debris removal, we're starting the planning to get into the actual recovery mode, which is the fiscal mode where we're looking for the money to be able to recover. And that's work with both the state and the feds. And that's where the documentation has got to be precise and exacting. A small mistake can get can keep you from

getting reimbursement. And we still don't have a presidential declaration yet. We're working with FEMA very closely. They're on island and working with us. They've been out in our vans in the communities to document and verify the damage that has been reported by the community as well as the damage that we've documented. and we believe that we're going to meet the eligibility requirements for a presidential decoration, but we don't know that we're going to get one yet. We hope we will. So, uh, right now I I wanted to just tell you that we had two emergency proclamations. The first one was March the 9th. The second one was March the 20th. And between the two, there was a little bit of a lull. In fact, that was when the mayor did his state of the city. That was on March 18th. But for the purposes of the EOC, we pretty much have been standup since March the 9th. And what we found was, as mayor described is that what was forecasted from the National Weather Service for the Kona low storm number one did not actually happen. And what was forecasted for the Kona low 2 storm was much less than what happened. And it caught everybody offguard. for the Konolo 2 storm. We're sitting down there in the EOC and the reservoirs, the dams, the river levels do not indicate at that time a severe need to evacuate. And one of the one of the questions as the the EOC is going through and you have to understand they're in a basement in the FSY municipal building in downtown Honolulu. they have except through the virtual cameras that they have and the input that they get from the first responders on the street, they don't have the ability to know what's actually going on in Wua. So, they use triggers and markers like dam levels, water levels, things of that nature. But when that

event happened that night and the rainfall levels were 10 in plus when they were forecasted at 2 to three inches, it really was something that was not expected. And we need to put all that together. We need to look at all the data minute by minute, hour by hour during that critical period and see what we can do better and how we could have better aided the community. And our commitment to the community is to do that. Right now we're operating off an incident action plan. So every morning in the EOC, the mayor meets me with Randy Collins and Jennifer Walters and the EOC team and we meet down in the EOC at 7:30 in the morning and we go through the incident action plan structure. And I want to say that even during the event itself, you're you're it's a very structured environment. It's coordinated calls between the state and the county. The governor's on the state calls. The mayors are also on the state call from all islands. And then we have our own internal EOC call after that. Now that we're out of the actual event, we're in the debris removal, disposal, and recovery mode. And it's different, but it still needs to be structured. and and the structure is what enables us to operate efficiently. And what happens immediately after the event after the deluge of rain is that we shift from the emergency operations mode to the debris removal, disposal, and recovery mode. And what happened in that 24 hours between the two is that we're getting a ton of texts, a ton of phone calls, and everybody is asking for support from different areas. And we're doing our best to give that support, but it's not

perfect. In fact, it's imperfect. And the quickest way to resolve that is to put the structure in place that allows us to have a process that we go through. So when you look at our structure today, I'm going to pull it out. It's not for public dissemination because it has phone numbers for everybody that's involved. You have an it's called Konolo Storm Recovery. This is operational period number eight. It's for March 29th through March 30th. It's signed by the director Randall Collins. And this is what sits in front of the mayor, the me, the head of DEM, the deputy at DEM. And we go through this. And as you walk through this, it's a very structured incident objectives. You have all the objectives. You have the operational period, the comments, the situational awareness, and then it breaks up and it goes through. You have the organizational structure, and then it goes through item by item. The first one for now is debris removal because that's what we're in. Getting debris out of the affected communities and how we do that. The second one is damage assessment because there are deadlines to when you have to provide the damage assessment to FEMA. So, we're doing that at the same time that we're doing debris removal. The third one is community assistance center. And this is where we have all of our resources, all of our partners that are assigned to work with us. We have lead for each one of those phone numbers so the mayor can call them and he knows if there's a need that's not being met, who can who he can ask to do what. And now we're in the process of trying to stand up um to expand what we stood up at Wua into other communities including LA Kahuku and Yi so that they have some

access to these resources as well. And after the community assistance center you have housing. Housing is very important trying to locate housing near the impacted community. We know that people don't like to leave their homes, but some people need to. So, we're working on that. After housing, you have Y and I. So, this is where the leader for Y and I, and that's Major Beckley, reports in to the mayor and the team on exactly what's happening in Yi, the needs and the successes. Then you have Winward and Winward is head headed up by HFD um Moleua and Kevin Molehua reports every morning to the mayor and gives us a status update for Wua and Hale Eviva. It's the Wahiwa IMT and that's Major Ramson. he reports every morning. And so every day we go through this structure to make sure that we know exactly who's in charge, who's accountable, what we're doing for the day, and then we make adjustments throughout the day. And that's the mode we're in right now. So there is structure, there is a plan, there's leadership. Mayor and his team have been involved around the clock. And if you have any specific questions beyond this, I would like to defer to Randall Collins. the director of DEM. He can answer your questions and just let the community know that we appreciate you being here today. We're here to learn. We're here to do better. Our commitment is to do better as we go along. We only want to improve in the support that we provide impacted communities. So, thank you very much.

No, thank you so much to all of you um for coming out today. And really, the idea today is not to assign blame at all. It's really to figure out what's going on. And also secondary is if we can learn from the situation so we can do even better. That that really is the idea. So I appreciate you all being out here. I have two quick questions and I'm going to turn it over to the the panel for other questions. But real quick, you know, you mentioned that um you were getting tons of texts and phone calls and so were we and you and I and the mayor. In fact, we had a brief exchange, but ultimately, you know, I was calling directors and others to try to get resources down to the affected areas. Um, but it would be really helpful to figure out in these types of situations who's in charge, like who should we direct those inquiries to and who's calling the shots? Are you able to answer that? I know we talked a little bit about it yesterday, but that way we would know, okay, this is who we need to contact or when people call us, we can divert them to this person. Would that be you, director of emergency management, the mayor? It's just could we get clarification as far as that's concerned?

Yeah, I appreciate that question and I'll say that that initially before you have the incident action plan in place with all of your points of contact. Um, it it is a little bit fluid and we were accepting all text and all phone calls from everyone as well. And we were actually assigning resources just based upon requests. I'd get a phone call saying I need HPD up at Wua because there is trash in the roadway. Council member Wire called me. I believe that was on Sunday afternoon and we had a very um heartfelt productive discussion where I could sense that he had needs that were not being met. and and so before you get this structure in place that you really have to have that puts the leadership at the EOC, it is a little bit dynamic because you haven't stood this up yet and it takes some time. So, as I explained to council member Wire on the phone, the rain stops, we immediately start putting together all of the action plan components that allow us to have reporting entities. We have to assign leadership in the Wii coast, Wua, Haleiva, the Winward Coast. We have to have reporting entities. We have to be talking to Roger Babcock. So that structure takes a little bit of time and I think it took us about 24 hours to actually get that in place. on Sunday afternoon. Um Ed Sniffen working with us uh was able to get the first sort of haulers up into the Wua community to try to start removing the trash off the roadway and we had HPD up there at the time. But the bottom line to your answer is is that the leadership and the structure flows through the EEO the EOC

and the mayor's at the top and then it goes to DEM and then from DEM it goes to the incident command team and then it goes down to all the subsets whether it's food volunteers, community assistance center, debris removal, it's all very structured so that there's accountability when you ask for stuff to get done. And so today I would say the leadership is with Dr. Randall Collins and the EOCC team, but understanding that mayor is over all of that.

Okay. No, that's very helpful. And you also said earlier that Mayor Beckley is in Major Beckley is in charge for Y and I HBD HFD Mukle Hua for Winward and Major Ramson for Wua. those the people we should be contacting if constituents contact us or do we contact um Director Collins? So, so our request is that everything go through the EOC because if if we're not capturing request what they do, we have a and this is a question for all the council members. Are you aware that we have a virtual EOC? Is that has that ever been shown to you?

Okay, we we should educate you on that. But I can go to my computer and I have a virtual EOC VOCC. And on that screen I can see everything. I can see every dashboard. I can see every operation. I can see every request for assistance. I can see every response. And for example, I'll give you an example. I think it was Monday of this week. Rep. Quinnland was calling me from Wua and he had taken a photo of a community where once they cleaned the street, the easement between the street and the homeowner was still a lot of mud and water. And he said, "How do we get the mud off the easement so that the homeowners can access their homes?" He took a picture, sends a picture to me. I upload the photo, I put it into the virtual EOC. It goes right into the command center. The command center then goes through the incident action plan and assigns it to the resource that can address that. And they have ENV and Border Water Supply go out right away and try to figure out why there is still water in the easement and ends up there's a broken water mane and there possibly is some ENV failures in that area. If it doesn't go through the EOC, then we can't track it and have the accountability that the community deserves. So, we ask that people go through the EOC and they not do stuff outside the EOC. So, if you have a request, you can make it to mayor, to me, to Krishna, but we're going to put it in the EOC because that's where it needs to go to have accountability. Okay, that's super helpful. Um, one more question before I turn it over to the members. So, in my preparation for today's hearing, I went online to look at the various emergency plans and I came across at least four. One was the local hazard mitigation plan, which

actually is on your website, DM's website, and then you could click on any one of the different types of hazards. So, I pulled the hazard profile dealing with um flooding. I also found a comprehensive emergency mitigation draft plan, which actually is really good. It's a draft though. It hasn't been adopted by the administration or the council, but I I think it's really good laying out who's in charge and um and all the various things that we as government workers should be doing. And then also the long-term disaster recovery plan which at some point we have to transition from immediate needs to long-term needs. Um, but it might be helpful just from your point of view which one of these plans and by the way I didn't know about that daily impact plan which I'm really happy to hear is happening but which one of these plans because would would we follow the comprehensive emergency management plan um was drafted in 2025 but not adopted. The last comprehensive management emergency management plan was I guess approved in 2014. So do we follow the 2014 plan? Do we follow the draft 2025 plan, the local hazard mitigation plan? Which which should we be following?

Yeah, thank you, Chair Waters. U I'm going to let Dr. Collins answer that. I'll tell you my understanding of it. My understanding is that we have a lot of plans that are in work and and there are mitigation plans that are intended to minimize the risk of ever getting into an emergency situation. And so we have them for fire, we have them for flooding, we have them for for many different things. And those are all plans that are best practice best practices that we try to put in place so that we don't have to get into an EOC and have an emergency operation which is what an EOC emergency operation center. So I'll let Dr. Collins speak and provide more clarity about when we're actually in an EOC which plan is governing.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you MD. Uh Randy Collins, director of the Department of Emergency Management. It's a pleasure to be with you, council. Appreciate the opportunity to share with you and talk about uh and and give a good understanding of what our emergency operations are about. So with regards to our plans, you first mentioned the local hazard mitigation mitigation plan um adopted last year and very excited about this plan. This is a plan that every jurisdiction must have uh in order to be eligible for FEMA assistance. This is a plan that is not operational in terms of having um dynamic activity where we're going to go save people. This is a plan that is done uh and really focused on infrastructure and other projects that uh reduce or lessen the effects or and and hopefully prevents uh many different disasters based on the hazard and based on the mitigation activities that you can take uh to to do that. So, as an example with wildfire, one of the mitigation activities you want to do is remove vegetation that could create wildfire in a particular area. Therefore, it uh removes the likelihood of a wildfire happening in that particular area. So, that's just one example of some of the things you might see in a local hazard mitigation plan. It's not something that we would refer to when this Kona low storm came. That's um something that we refer to more in regular days and try and even in in the long term in terms of our budgets and activities that we're doing on any given day to focus on these should be the projects that we do or work with and coordinate with other entities that have responsibilities in there to do those mitigation projects and reduce or lessen the effects of disaster on Aahu. So that's the intent of that plan. The 2025 plan is a plan that as you mentioned it's draft. We're working on it um because we have um as

you mentioned the 2014 plan that um is is much more comprehensive in terms of length and volume. Um and so the 2025 plan is our next iteration of the comprehensive emergency management plan. So no, it's not in effect in so far as we've signed it and sealed it and delivered it and published it. But what I will say is we obviously have lessons learned from 2014 and all the operations and exercises and everything that we learned from over the years. Uh and we always incorporate those and make changes in our processes and and and things like that. So you'll see in that draft as you mentioned it's it's a good draft. We still got a long way to go on a lot of things that we need to do with that plan. Uh but until then we basically are following the 2014 plan. Uh that being said, I would also tell you that our plans um along with the plans of most emergency management offices across the country are very much based in national doctrine as well. Um some of which is called the national incident management system. Um and so so most of the plans conceptually are are very similar um from 2014 to 2025. um that that national incident management system uh hasn't changed significantly and it's it's certainly designed to start from an incident at a very low level uh and grow um as as the incident requires. And it also provides the framework to receive federal and state aid. And this is why everyone all emergency management agencies all jurisdictions across the country uh utilize that national incident management system. and that is um a a big portion of the uh content that goes into any comprehensive emergency management plan. So that being said, we're focused on the uh comprehensive emergency management plan of 2014. Um

but as you and and I'm sure as you've seen uh Chair Waters that u in there are also hazard annexes um and and specific um annexes based on um groupings of of resources as well. And those those uh annexes have different years. Some were 07, some were 2013 etc. And those are because uh with so many things the iteration of of changes over time we we can only get to a certain number of those annexes etc uh each year uh kind of thing. So so we have this base plan and that gives us the framework of how the entire jurisdiction will respond to incidents like last Thursday night. Uh so then when we come to incidents like last Thursday night, if you're talking about, you know, I've heard from you that you want to understand that chain of command better. And so what happens before we've really um gotten to the point where we're doing these incident action plans that uh MD mentioned um is is the city's operating pretty normally. Um, police districts are operating within their police districts. Fire districts are operating within their fire districts. All the other agencies are operating in their normal mode. And so what happens in an emergency response as the rain's coming down, as the flood's coming down, uh, police and fire uh, are operating almost independently. There are um, incidents where they will colllocate and obviously support each other and that sort of thing. And there's a mechanism to govern that which we call the incident command system. Um but every resource that goes out is activating the incident command system and utilizing that incident command system to organize their efforts wherever they may be. And they could be um you know the fire could be running a uh a water rescue uh operation in Otake while um police might

be running uh just uh traffic enforcement and uh road road and traffic control somewhere else in Wua or something like that. But at some point you want them all to come together and work as one team. And then that's what happens when you get to the first step is something called unified command. And then the next step would be to assign an incident management team which we did assign the Honolulu incident management team uh getting into um uh Monday uh of yeah I believe Monday. And so that incident management team then their role is to coordinate all the agencies under one single incident management or incident action plan uh to govern that particular area. And what they were assigned and what they were assigned is I provide the incident commander of them a letter of expectations of the uh responsibilities that they are supposed to have and take care of with regards to that. If it's happening outside of that, the emergency operations center um continues to work with the uh single or groupings of resources that are operating outside the incident management team's perspective. Uh but wanting to go back to Thursday night and the day that uh rain is falling. Um so there, you know, I I definitely know that uh fire was out there with an incident command structure getting ready. I spoke uh many times with Chief Samala on the ground. Police had their operations going on as well. spoke with uh Cliff Ramson, Major Ramson and uh many times on on the ground there um and trying to understand that particular situation. So at that time um and it's best to think of when you're asking about chain of command with regards to emergency management, we have different levels of authority. And so at that tactical level, Chief Somala is o overseeing the fire response. Uh Major Ramson's overseeing the police response, and that's at that incident command

level that we talk about. And then we talk about the multi- agency coordination level, which is what the emergency operations center um uh serves as. And there uh the EOC director. So on Thursday night, I was uh stepping in as the emergency operations center director. So there there's where I am. And as the MD mentioned, as always, the mayor is always in charge on top of that in that policy level group. Uh so those are our three levels. Policy level, multi- agency coordination, and then incident command level. So so it's a bit of playing three-dimensional chess um and understanding those dynamics. Um, so as Chief Samala and Major Ramson are dealing with the response, uh, and I'm dealing with multi- agency coordination, they're in the fight trying to make those rescues, um, that we know about and and that we've heard, the 233 rescues and so forth. Uh, at my level, I'm working on getting them resources and providing them decision-making authority. We also have that alert and warning mission, uh, and so forth. So, we immediately were requesting additional resources from the National Guard, highwater vehicles, and other things that could support the the mission. Um, as well as we knew um once daybreak came because it's very hard to do search and rescue at night. You can't see um you've got rushing water everywhere. We've got roads closed, etc., etc. Um so our focus that evening was obviously if we have any any um intelligence or information telling us of rescues that we could make safely, we're going to we're going to affect that. But at the same time as the uh late early morning hours were going on. We were working cohesively together, all of us, to make sure we're getting all the resources in place to at daylight do a surge to go in and rescue all the people that might have been in need, which is where we also uh I mean, we spared no expense. We even brought in

OSD and lifeguards to come in and do something that they're not really typically doing. They're obviously always on the beaches, but now we're going to be doing the water rescue. Um, and lifeguards seem to be like a good resource to approach. uh to to throw at that. And so, collectively, we all made a a plan to work together to get those resources in as fast as we could and make all the life rescues that we could as soon as Daybreak could uh or as soon as Daybreak came and we were able to better assess the situation um with that with that daylight supporting us. So, that's a little bit of what the chain of command, if you will, looked like. Sir,

thank you. That that was really helpful. Just out of curiosity, is the when you talk about the incident command system and you have a incident commander when we talk about an incident is the Kona low storm 2 an incident because you got something going on on Y and I you got something going on in Walua, right? Do you have a commander for each one of those or one commander who's overseeing the whole storm?

So that's a that's a matter of subjective experience. Um, and I mentioned those three levels that we talked about also. Um, so essentially, uh, especially if we talk about hurricanes, uh, hurricane's going to come over, it's going to affect more than one jurisdiction. It's going to affect, uh, different areas. And if you can break those particular areas down by areas of responsibility and assign an incident commander to those locations to be the onseen incident commander, then uh, that helps you break down the span of control across the board. and pro and allows you to start understanding um priority um you know so in this case obviously uh Wua Haliva was the worst hit areas and so in our priorities in our county action plan we listed those areas as they get pri uh priority resources to get in there and and start fixing things and while we had as as the mayor mentioned this was an island islandwide incident and so there are other things happening other places. Um they may not get the priority of resources because they weren't as as significantly impacted. Um and but those areas would also have incident commanders. And then again that report back to the EOC allows us to understand the situations based on the information that they're providing that allows us to identify who gets the priority of resources and support from that second level of of theory. So you'll have incident commanders in different locations. Um, and then at that county level, you have the EOC director and then we have the mayor.

You know, the mayor went into a little bit of a timeline the night of the 19th and I didn't plan on getting into that, but I think I wanted to keep it more at a higher level, but when the rain start the the river starts to fill up, right, and a lot of rain in a short period of time, at that point, did we have an incident command system in place? And was someone assigned to Walua as an example? Someone assigned to Yanai, someone assigned to Manoa to take care of that rather than just having one incident, the Kona storm, because you got stuff going on on all parts of the island. It just seems like a good idea maybe to have an incident commander in charge of a different part of the island.

Yes, sir. So, the answer is yes. Um the incident command system is designed uh even if we just take it down to its very basic a very basic incident just for the purposes of understanding. Um a police officer that drives up on a motor vehicle accident that police officer is the incident commander there and the incident command system is designed to build based on the uh size and complexity of the incident. So anytime a first responder is dispatched to an incident, whether it's the fire department going to just a residential fire, one of those people, the captain or the battalion chief is going to be the incident commander there. Any, you know, SWAT team call out, the SWAT commander is going to be the incident commander there. So as individual or groupings of resources uh were arriving into those particular areas, they definitely were incident commanders. But this goes back to understanding in the immediate response where we're going from those uh individual operations of police, fire, EMS, etc. Um to getting to a point where we can collectively get together and then have one incident commander one or or a uni what we call unified command where um two or more organizations have legitimate um statutory authority over a particular issue. So, uh, obviously, uh, HPD has authority over law enforcement, HFD has responsible over firefighting and rescue, uh, kind of thing.

Yeah. And we, we can go through that, like I said, the timeline, but just as an example, you know, I heard a story about the fire department coming where these folks are on a rooftop. And if we consider that an incident where the fire department allegedly told the folks that we can't come to get you, stay on the roof of the of the house. Um, but that would be an incident commander of whoever was on that fire truck. But really, anyway, I'll leave it at that. Thank you so much. Members, I'd like to open up council member

council member wire then tupola. Um thank you chair. Um do want to mahalo. I think as MD mentioned there there you know we did have very productive discussions and I appreciate the the turnout from the city state the volunteers and those ended up contracting with the state and and work is certainly progressing. I did want to dive into a few of the specifics. I'll go chronologically and I'll just kind of do the four front part because I think council member Tupelo is going to have additional questions as well. Um, so I'm just curious, what time did you realize it was bad in Wua? Would you say if someone asked you that question?

Um, very much trying to monitor um with the weather service and several phone calls between us and the National Weather Service as well as other entities. We're definitely we're focused a little bit on the reservoirs as well and talking to uh DNR dam safety as well as um the um the dam operators from Dole. Um so was there a particular time and sorry I might jump in just to make it concise more for my colleagues you know because I I know chair mentioned not wanting to dive into specifics but was there a particular time that comes to mind?

Yes sir. I'll try to be more concise. I would tell you it's a crescendo for me, you know. So, we got the word from the National Weather Service at 10:57 there's uh base flash flooding. So, obviously um as the mayor explained, we weren't expecting that. So, at 11:00 it was like, okay, that's my first red flag that things are starting to get bad somewhere. Uh but the the the the alert was for Islandwide. So, I wouldn't say that I knew specifically about Wua Haleiva at that point. Um then at uh 153 the weather service upgraded to a flash flood warning with uh with the the moniker of considerable which uh is is pretty significant. And again, it's an islandwide uh warning, but at that point, um I would tell you um I was uh so that was at 1:53 a.m. Definitely around that time, we were starting to get reports uh from the first responders and so forth that um that there were flash flooding problems in in many different areas. And we were even hearing of responders getting stuck in in the water in their police vehicles and and and so forth. And so, um,

and that was that prior to the 10:57 p.m. National Weather Service alert. I'm sorry, Council Member, can you say that again? Yeah. Uh, and sorry, I do have a monotone voice in Speaker Lee Lobo. Was Was that awareness prior to the 1057 National Weather Service alert, the things you're talking about in terms of first responders, 911 calls, all of that? Yeah. No, that was after because at 11:00 um when that first warning came out, that's when we decided to activate the emergency operations center. So, there was uh drive time. We weren't in the emergency operations center. So, there was drive time in turn on the emergency operations center, which doesn't happen, you know, at the flick flip of a switch or anything. So, what time was that that it was turned on?

So, we activated at 11. Again, that's still it depends on where our staff are coming from. Um I'm coming from Wy Ki, so that's 15 minutes at that time at night or so. Uh getting into the OC and then doing the startup procedure.

Okay. So activated 11. What um what stream level typically triggers what stream level typically triggers evacuation orders for Otake camp? So for Otaki camp um and especially even in during the Konolo warns storm or um uh you know the focus isn't the stream level it's the reservoir level and so we have to look at that reservoir level and if the reservoir hits a particular um a particular level then that's when we make that decision to evacuate otaki camp based on reservoir

level. So, the reservoir level specifically, I think what you're referencing is the spillway, right? When it gets to 80 ft, um, additional water goes in. Is that is that the reason you're bringing that up in reference to Cam? I I bring up the reservoir level because we were monitoring the reservoir levels because we hit the proper thresholds. Um, and it's not as simple. It's not it's not even really a threshold. It's a decision point because we were coming very close to that in previous storms, but if the rain has stopped um and we're monitoring those reservoir levels and the reservoir monitor

just I think we're going away from the question. I guess first the question is why are you monitoring the dam? Um and I'm not saying you shouldn't be. I'm just wanting explanation of why you're monitoring the dam in reference to potential flood impacts. So, we monitor the dam. Um, if it hits the spillway, uh, the spillway is a good thing. The spillway allows to relieve the pressure off of the dam. Correct. Um, and so we want to see if that even works. Um, okay, it hits the level, the spillway is activated. Um, will it go down? U, you know, we want to look at that. Um, and so, but we're looking at that reservoir level because if it's going to come up to, and I hate this word, it's not our word. Uh all the emergency uh action plans use the word failure and that uh can mean many different things. It means that the water can come over the dam. Um and that could

Okay. Yeah. I'll I'll stop you. I think I'm just asking because you know I think there's definitely concerns about monitoring the spillway, right? Because you're going to see an increase in water entering the stream which could result in potential flooding. And of course you're monitoring the height of the dam, right? because being earth inn on the other side once the water goes over the top it could quickly erode and so that's the concern for potentially breaking the dam right does that sound correct yes sir but I would add on that on Thursday night um while we were monitoring the dam levels correct

as as mentioned u by the mayor I think uh the dam levels we're getting close to things that we would take action on but at the same time it's that 10 in of rain that we got in just certain amount of time that that that was just coming right down on Ataki camp and on Wua and everything else that created uh flooding as well as the

totally totally understood which is why I started with the question about the stream gauge by otake camp right because of course you're monitor monitoring the dam for water and of course the community all knows of course many were asleep um but the the community is well aware We actually talked about this with you at the Hawaii neighborhood board the week before, right, when everyone was concerned about the last stem and um we had an extensive conversation as a community, right? And so that's that's specifically why I was asking about um the assessment of the the stream gauge, right? Um okay, so we're working from that. So it seems like there was ambiguity about how severe the flooding was. Seems like the stream gauges weren't incorporated into that analysis and there is a reliance exclusively on alerts coming out from the National Weather Service. Is that a fair statement? Aside from monitoring the dam, I I'm I'm positive that we are monitoring every uh node of information that we can get into the emergency operation center that's provided. And uh so we are monitoring stream gauges. We are monitoring um what well we even have the weather service um most of the time in in our emergency operations center. And so we're working very closely with them. There's USGS gauges, there's um state gauges and there are uh National Weather Service gauges all that have to be monitored all that are not real time. Uh sometimes they take 90 minutes to update sometimes they take 15 minutes to update and they're very inconsistent.

Yeah. So I know at 11:30 the the stream was at 29 feet over the minor flooding stage. Um, at what point did you um request first responders to initiate door knocking and alerting uh households or was that a request? Maybe I should ask that because historically, right, that's often what occurs when um first mandatory evacuations occur for Otake and of course if they extend out broader um to to what extent were were there communications with first responders about the levels that we're seeing in terms of the water coming in and that we needed to initiate those evacuation conversations. Well, I would definitely say uh after uh 1:53 a.m. we were definitely talking with uh and maybe before, but we were talking with the first responders on the ground um with uh radios and in some cases some cell phones. Um and so uh we had uh HFD, HPD, and ESD all in the emergency operations center at the time. and uh trying to get an understanding of what they were experiencing in that particular area. And so that's after 2:00 a.m. Uh still trying to make an assessment. Again, it's dark. It's night. My expectation of them being able to see uh is is not high u because of of of the conditions, the weather conditions and so forth. But we were starting to get those reports of um our our emergency response being impacted because those first responders couldn't even get into the particular area. And

so just I'll I'll go quickly because I know chair there's other folks to ask questions. So I'll just wrap up real quickly. Um so the first evacuation order, when did that occur? So, in reality, um, based on, uh, an evacuation order based on, um, the reservoir levels, it wasn't until, um, I don't even have that right now. It was until after the, uh, 5:00 a.m. Uh, it got into the 5 a.m. time frame. Yeah.

But I would tell you, I think what you're really asking is at 3:42. Um, just prior to 3:42, I got a call from Major Ramson. Uh, and this was the first and clearest report that I had um about the weather conditions in Wua in terms of what was happening. Um, report on the ground. A report on the ground. Even though the the 1:00 a.m. stream height was like almost 35 ft.

That's correct. And so it was that picture that uh then made me um put out the wireless emergency alert at uh 3:42. But you'll notice on that wildest uh emergency alert, it wasn't designated for Otake. It wasn't designated for um you know specific to the Wahiwa Dam and who we would notify for that. It was we

so it was it was specifically geared towards the dam. No, it was specifically geared toward the entire area of Hale Eva and Wua and because it wasn't based on the dam. It was based on the flash flooding and it wasn't we we messaged um if you can evacuate safely, do so. We had significant concerns though. If police and fire can't get in, we're telling people to go outside of their home, get in their car, do whatever to evacuate. Uh that means they're getting into rushing water where our officers can't get in, our responders can't get in. It's probably not a good idea to put the the citizens in a evacuation mode and drive out in those same conditions. Again, dark night, can't see the rain, um and so forth. safer to have uh you make your best assessment to stay in in a house as high as you can be uh and uh use your best judgment and not getting into uh rushing flood waters.

I think overall that's an understandable position. I think my larger concern was it just doesn't seem like all the data that's available um that the community knows to look to to rely on. I mean They shouldn't have. I encourage them to leave, but I know folks that still stayed home during the evacuation order because they were watching that damn level, right? We know the stream gauges. I know folks on the ground are re reacting. Um, but that's the reason I wanted to clarify those questions because I think the assumption is as data points or resources go down, say the radar is out on Mukai, um, you're going to use all the tools you have and then make those assessments. And so that that's just my concern with this particular line of questions because by the time those alerts went out, folks were already trapped in a lot of ways. And so um and I have a lot of other questions and think there's going to be improvements we can incorporate through the whole process. I started chronologically. There's the shelter issues that I think we can work through particularly when we're dealing with flood um victims. Um but I'm going to pause there because I know some of my colleagues have really important questions as well. So m chair. No, thank you. Before we go to Council Member Tupola, just to kind of wrap up what Council Member Wire is saying, why wasn't the evacuation notice given at 8:25 p.m. when Ka Konahua stream gauge surged 2 feet in two hours, knowing that according to the local hazard plan, which identifies Wua as one of three known flood planes on Aahu, knowing that we had to evacuate Wua in 2021, knowing that the the also the flood plan says that areas that are saturated ated and which we know that happened like Wu was saturated that once the surge of

Konahua happened that's when the evacuation maybe should have occurred but it doesn't seem like the the OEC was was lit back up until 10 p.m. So I guess who was in charge at 8:25 who could have or should have made that call? Well, I don't have any uh knowledge of that particular incident. That was um obviously 3 hour 8:25 2 and a half hours before we activated the emergency operations center which means we had no knowledge of of of such an event happening at that moment. And at the same time, I would tell you that uh not only did we not have the knowledge of that, we we weren't so when we're not on duty, we have a duty officer system so that uh 911 uh can get a hold of us at DEM when something arises. And we never received a call at any time uh until we hit a threshold at that 11 p.m. with the National Weather Service issuing a flash flood warning and that was our trigger to activate. Had we known about any type of major uh flooding happening um at the time um at 8:25, then we would have certainly evaluated that and determined if we needed to activate an emergency operation center at that time.

So there's a gauge system right around the island and there was a gauge in Konahua stream. Wasn't someone monitoring that? Because again, that stream rose two feet in a really short amount of time. That didn't alert anybody to say, "Hey, look, we we got to look at this." So, the monitors don't alert anyone. And that's a problem. And uh on top of that, I would tell you that this is one reason that I am a very much uh large advocate for DEM um getting the staffing that we need to do a a watch desk that's married right there in the JTMC with the other 911 operators that we can monitor all the different hazards that we have, whether that be reservoirs or or the Alert West uh cameras and other mechanisms to monitor those early warning systems. and and I know that I've been working with uh council members on an AI early warning hazard detection system that's that I hope will give us more data the better data that we need to make decisions in the emergency operations center but at this time we don't have that. So according to the comprehensive emergency management plan, DEM duty officer is assigned 24 hours a day, seven days a week and advised of such events by police and fire dispatch, state warning point, concerned citizens or other agencies. So did we have a DEM duty officer assigned on that night?

Yes, sir. We had a DEM duty officer assigned on that night. didn't

in fact we had three. Um and the problem with our uh our duty officer program is that it depends on the duty officer getting the phone call. Um and on on top of that, they don't have to answer the phone. That's why we have three duty officers. Um so there's no they're not on standby pay. Uh so there's no mandatory requirement for them to answer the phone. That being said, my staff are extremely dedicated and they always answer the phone and we always um you know rush to the to the call, but we didn't get any calls uh before that time. And so they're not monitoring anything. They're on offduty time and so um you know the first again the first trigger that we got for activating the EOC was at 11 o'clock 1057.

Okay. Okay. And just to follow up, it says the DM maintains city-wide systems and procedures for monitoring for threats, unusual events, and emergency situations, which arguably based on what happened with Konawan. Well, I I'll leave it at that. Thank you, uh, Council Member Tupa.

Thanks so much, Chair. Um, thank you to you and to council member Wville. Those very important questions. Those are actually at the crux of many of the community um concerns is who made the call at what time and why it was delayed. And so I think one of the things that I took away when we opened Cole Kole during the um tsunami and this is for director Collins they gave me a minute-by-minute breakdown of every decision, who made the decision, when things were made. And I think people still haven't really been clear. Even us, that's why we're having this this hearing. We haven't been clear on minuteto minute. And we don't need a explanation. Just get out a sheet. You know, the Navy, the Army, the military, as soon as we open that gate, we close it. Boom. They're like, "We have an assessment of everything that happened, how many people passed through the gate, what we did." Like, we need to have that written less like less lengthy answers and more concise, very clear answers about that. You know, I I feel for the people. I feel for them because some of these individuals like council member um uh brought up, it is just it was just terrible, you know. So, I'm going to bring up a few things that I think should be improved. I'm not going to ask a lot of questions. I really just hope somebody is there taking notes. I mean, if they're not, I can take my own notes, but first off, I do think that trapped externally. So for me, there's got to be levels of how we're assessing the community. Whoever is trapped trapped externally, and I'm bringing that up because of what um Chair Waters just said because there's a family in LA who the parents of the children were gone and they had two elderly people in there and their kids were alone and no one let anyone come into that street to help them. Sure, they didn't die, but their parents called. They were they were traveling and they called they said please somebody go to our house and get our kids out of the house and the the word on the street was no one can enter. They blocked both sides of the street cuz they said oh the you know it's too flooding. The first thing that we should

do is see if anyone is trapped externally. Council member Wire did something very important who goes door to door because who went door to door to make sure that people were out of the house so that we knew that if we closed off that street that nobody was trapped. So that's number one. We got to look for people who are trapped externally due to whatever it may be. Maybe they can't exit. Se secondly, the elderly that are trapped. Maybe they could get out, but they can't physically move. That's the next thing we should worry about because in every community, including my own, we had people that just couldn't move themselves out. Thirdly, we have to see if people are utility trapped, meaning like they don't have water, electric, there's some type of hindrance of them being able to just shelter in place or stay in their house. Fourth, you know, and we all know about this. When we move everyone to shelter, right, to get shelter assistance. So once they have shelter assistance, then the next step is placement assistance. And to everyone's point so far, I do not know who made the call to shut the shelters down, but we weren't ready to get shut down. We had people that still needed to be placed. I don't know who made the call. Nobody called me, but um, you know, we had to stay there all night because a whole lot of chaos broke out cuz, you know, the placement assistant needed to be there. Next, we need to set up hubs in every area. Even if they are interim hubs, because people needed resources and they couldn't move, there are still people whose cars are inoperable. They cannot walk. They cannot go to the store. They cannot go to work. So, we need these interim hubs set up. Lastly, we need those hubs flooded with resources. We ask the community what's needed and then we put those resources at the hub. And I know every time I talk to them about LA, they say, "Okay, yeah, we have stuff in Kohuku." There are people in LA they can't drive and they they are not able to get to Kohuku. So saying Kohuku is for Kohuku. Saying La is for La saying ha is for haul. It's not like we can all share resources. There's a lot of distance between those towns. Lastly, then we have to assess whether or not we close or we continue, right? Because up to some point there is going to be the

ability for the community to help themselves, which we're not at that now. Lastly, I wanted to talk about the communication. I just need to give a shout out to Andy Sugg. you know, he is the only person that kept our council members updated minute to minute. We were on a text red with him. How grateful I was to finally hear any update because I will say that I'm subscribed to the notifications and they were not very specific and helpful. And I don't know who writes the notifications on the H&L alert, but I I did not get a lot of information out of that. So, thank you Andy Suck. Thank you even to today. He's answering my phone calls, answering my texts, and it's been a world of a difference. So there's three levels of communication that I think we need to improve at. You guys have your intercommunication that's between you guys, the admin and all the agencies and that's a lot of what been has been talked about today. And that's great. You guys communicate. Where is the intro communication between you guys and us? The fact that today it was said that we should brief ourselves on a virtual EOC that we don't know about. I have no idea why that's coming up today on April 1st. So I don't think it's helpful for us to only have intercommunications. We have to have intracommunications between the admin and us. Lastly, external communication. Much of the information that you guys are passing needs to be concise, short, clear, because I'm getting text messages and sharing it and then the departments are like, "Oh, no, no, that's not for the public. It's for this." Then write a sentence that's concise, clear, and accurate so that we can share it. It's a very hard thing to do in emergencies, but that's how we're going to be able to succeed. Concise, clear, short communication. Inter, intra, external communication. Three of them. I really feel like it's not that hard and I think we're really relying on ourselves too much. We have to like really bump up all three levels of communication because even till

today, I was in LA on on Saturday. They said nobody had come to help them. And I know council member wire is, you know, doing so much in W. So I asked him graciously, can I go and help them? So every area has their different needs, but easily we could do a quick zoom call with whoever in that community needs help and then give them the information about the resources without having to do any highlevel coordination. We could do something quick and fast because people are dying for communication like really really needing that communication. And so I will stop there, but I I just want to say you know there have been many many helpful people. I will say the deputy of ENV, he's been very responsive because I got trucks that need to get dumped. I have community members that are expending their own money. I'm trying to get waiverss at ENV. So, he's been helpful. Andy Sug's been helpful. And I know that they kind of represent all of you guys. So, I do want to thank them publicly for answering all the calls. And DFM, I'll give one more example chair and then I I will conclude. The whole thing that happened with me and my community with DFM is that DFM went out there with one vector truck and guess what? It wasn't making a difference. One vector truck stayed there all day and you couldn't even see a difference in the water on the road. It looked exactly the same. So I I told them I said, "We're going to have to get more pumps out here." So I called Khani Ha. We got two HFD pumps, one DFM pump. DOT um hired a second contractor. So they brought three pumps, asked the private property owner if we could pump onto their land because we were wasting too much time running vector trucks back and forth. We had to literally move the water. There was a gentleman that hadn't left his house for two and a half weeks. He was in his home because he could not leave and they have no water still till today. No water running. So, we stayed there. And the reason I'm sharing this is because the coordination between everybody is what's needed. And I'm not sure who's supposed to do that. I don't think it's supposed to be an inter incident commander. I think maybe somebody with indeed. I don't know. But DOT specifically told me, "We are not going to send you guys trucks or things

if no one's out there to coordinate." which is smart because they didn't know exactly where the road was. So that's the reason why I had to stand there because DOT was coming, HFD was coming, HEO was coming, um DFM was coming, the contractor was coming. So that point of contact, whoever it's supposed to be, that's so important because there are certain areas that needed like a flood of resources all at once and one person to coordinate all of that. So I don't know in the future when all that happens, but those are the kind of things that are still needed today. And I hope that maybe whoever's agency is supposed to handle it can, you know, I can pass that off to them because I do think there's many many people that can uh start to lift and make this work lighter. But a lot of it isn't going to just be the city, you know, it's going to be many, many other hands, private, uh, public u, you know, cuz he is not part of the city or the state, but they came out and sent me trucks as well. So anyways, thank you, Director Collins, for being here. And um I I really do just want to iterate like if we can pump up our communication, we need to do that yesterday and chair I have to log off but I'll still keep listening in. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I mean you bring up good points and that's why I was asking who are the incident commanders because I think multiple council members were asking for support and help and rather might be better just to go to the one person. Maybe that might be you or managing director um as mentioned earlier but that was part of the problem. We're all asking for help and really different communities needed probably the same equipment. Um, is there any other questions for DEM from other council members? Council member Okimoto, followed by Corduro and then Wy.

Okay. Thank you, Chair. Hello. Good afternoon, Director Collins. Some of my questions were already asked. I I was going through the timeline as well. I think Chair Waters went through in the beginning. he kind of had a a good grasp of it. But I I still feel like some of my questions were not answered even though they may have been posed. Um because the timeline is not working out for me and I know that the frustration of my colleagues who had their respective districts really impacted um is is a little confusing and I think we're on the budget side we're working on what can we do on the post but to me the the prior to the the disaster happening doesn't make sense to me. I I'm struggling with just accepting that we were told it was going to be just a few inches and it wasn't. And in going through the timeline that was given um through you and also through the civil beat article, I'm I don't understand if you can explain to me why the previous week on the Kona one um storm where the evacuation order was given at 29 ft. That didn't translate over to the Kona 2 storm. And you said, I think you and the mayor MD or I'm not sure who was it, maybe multiple um personnel said this, that you guys are watching it, but it didn't warrant it. And I don't understand that. Why would it warrant it the week before and now a week later when the ground probably was still saturated with water in it from the previous week? Why you guys waited until later when the water was even higher than it was the week before when the evacuation notice was given? I'm sorry, council member. What's the specific question?

Okay. Week one, Kona Kona low one. I believe at 29 ft the water level evacuation notification was given. Why was that not the case with Kona low 2? Why did you wait until it was at I I was taking notes. I have some of my notes as well. over the the same mark that it was the week before. I think 32 feet. Um, you said at 1. Nope. I have my notes here. You said that at I think at 1:30 1:00 that it was at 30 almost 35 ft, but the evacuation notification wasn't given until much later. You you posed, you said 3:42. You finally made the decision to advise the residents to evacuate. Why was that the case? Why did you wait that long when the week before at a lower level the evacuation notice was given?

So again, it is not uh as simple as just looking at the feat level. Uh

well, I I think that's where our concern is why not what what are we waiting for? If you're waiting for 911 calls, that to me doesn't make sense. If you're saying that you you had people 24 hours and you didn't get any 911 calls and so you didn't see the need or you didn't feel the the urgency to do so, that doesn't make sense to me. Um and and I I will second what council member Tupala said. I think Andy Sug did contact us, but it was about 5 something in the morning. By then I it wasn't just me. My district wasn't the one solely impacted, but I have friends in in the districts that were they're calling me panicked trying to figure out what's going on. I I feel like we're looking at the back end and again I think council members Nishimoto wire and Tupola were there to help people on the back end but I'm I'm concerned why why were the errors made on the on previous why why did we let that happen where we didn't let them know to evacuate. They're struggling and then it got to the point where first responders weren't able to go in. We need to do a better job there. And I I know you've explained this. I know the mayor's explained this and so has managing director. I haven't I I don't I haven't found confidence in the explanations that have been given so far. And I don't think it's acceptable to just state that there's been multiple factors when people's lives in their homes and they lost everything. And yeah, we're grateful that nobody lost their life as well, but that could not have been that could have been different as well. Council member, if I may, um I think I think what I want to what I want to share with you is that when you're down there in the EOC and you have a hundred people plus in the EOC from all the different departments and you've got flood gauges and all kinds of data, national weather support, it's the totality of the information that you're receiving and inputting. And

it's in addition to all the calls that all of the different departments are getting behind you. So, Department of Transportation is getting calls from council members and reps asking what is going to be our transit response. We're getting calls to DCS about what shelters. All of that is going on at one time. It is you. I I really would like to invite the council members to come down into the EOC and be there and observe what happens in the EOC so that you understand firsthand the complexity of the information that is being processed by a 100 plus people minute by minute in coordination with the state and haima. So, we're in constant coordination with all of them and it does come down at the end of the day to a judgment call and I promise you that they do their very best but it doesn't mean we get it perfect and that's the purpose of the afteraction report. We go through it minute by minute, hour by hour. We look at all of the information that came in from all of the different sources and we say things like, could we have made that decision earlier? That's the purpose of the afteraction report which we haven't done yet. But if you come down to the EOC and you sit there, that environment is extremely complex and frenetic and you're you're calling upon the leaders to make decisions and it's easy after the fact to look at certain data points and say, "Why didn't you do this or that?" But at the moment when you're down there and you've got five people trying to talk to you at once about rescue operations and power outage and that's the way it is. And so I would like to invite all of you to come down to the EOC learn more about it. That probably doesn't answer your question. I think when we get to the afteraction report, we will be in a

better position to go minute by minute, hour by hour, and he'll have all of the times in front of him, and he can tell you exactly where we were remiss, where we can do better, but we're just not there right now. Council member,

thank you, managing director. I was able to visit the location of the EOC when I first got into this seat back in 2022, 2023. So, I'm grateful for that opportunity. I don't know if it's wise for a bunch of us council members to be down there during an emergency. So, I don't know how we could experience it. I was wondering, you know, when this EOC is activated, um, how many what's the structure of it? You mentioned hundreds of people and I think that's what I'm trying to figure out. There has to be some kind of structure. FEMA has their or their org chart. There's there's a plan and I'm, you know, of what they would go through in the process. Um, I I would assume that we would we should have that as well because it's an emergency. So, we have to be prepared. Um, I I think in here in in the in the HRS it says that they the training should be happening. I would hope that there's training for these types of incidents. We're an island. It's not even though the last big storm was 20 years ago, Mayor Kawakami and I know from being from Kawaii, we just we're an island and we're prone to storms and and natural disasters. I it would be nice for us to hear some kind of structure of what this looks like when there's a call. I understand that there's multiple departments, but who's in charge? Who's who's making the calls? The I think HRS127A says the mayor is in charge, but then we have the DEM director. I've heard today incident commanders. I it's really confusing. This this org chart is is not clear to me and I am I am hoping that you guys will hopeful that you guys will share the afteraction. You did mention when you first came up here that you you held up this incident action plan. I think like council member Tupola said, it would be helpful if we just are not kept in the dark because we in our positions have to work with you guys and we have to represent the people in the community and as much as I know that you care for them, we we live in these communities and it pains us when we

don't have answers for them. So, I think my concerns have been on the the I'm trying to figure out what we could have done differently up front and it seems like evacuation, the notifications of the sirens was a big thing. Um, again, the article in Civil B talked about certain of them, some of them were broken or they weren't working. Not everybody's logged on or signed up for the HL alert. So, what can we do differently or better so that we're not at the post storm having to deal with such um trauma and tragedy that now we're trying to figure out, okay, what can we do? How could we evacuated better? How could we have um we can't prevent the natural disaster from happening, but we can be prepared to identify it, inform our educate the residents and get them out safely. I am grateful that nobody again lost their life, but that's not always the case. Most times it's not.

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate those comments and and council member, I can I can tell by your comments and your questions that that we probably haven't do done a good job of educating the council on on the EOC and the structure. Uh it is extremely structured and even when we're not in an event, we should bring you down there and show you the layout of the command center and you will see how structured it is. That's part of the challenge is it is extremely structured. So there's a front console where the mayor and I sit along with director Collins and director Walters and then there are teams throughout this room and on the board in front of us. There are all kind of data and they can toggle between data depending on what we want to see. So, we're following the water levels in Lake Wilson and we can see when it's dropping and we can see within a matter of hours when it literally went vertical. And that's when they put out that emergency evacuation. It literally went vertical because you don't know when the rain is going to stop. And then when it does stop, you start to see very gradually because of the spillway. You see right in front of you, you see the stream levels and and the the reservoir levels drop and all of this is going on, but it's extremely structured, but it's chaotic at the same time because every one of those departments that are seated in that room and they're all there are getting individual calls and inputs. A road is blocked. A power line is down. A stream has has blocked traffic. People want a shelter. All of this stuff is happening at one time. And what it does is it comes up to the people at the top and they have to make critical decisions and they do their very best. But I promise you, it's not perfect. That's the

reality of how it works. So, I would like to get all of the council members down there when we're not in an event, take you around the entire facility, that you ask every question you want. We'll give you all the structures in writing so you can see how structured it is. It is not an unstructured environment and things are not happening willy-nilly, but the truth is you don't have all the information you would like to have when you're being asked to make very critical decisions. And sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don't.

Thank you, director. Really quick, just because you mentioned the the the spike in the water levels and I I I not going to again profess to be an expert. I know that's what the director and execut um deputy directors are for. But on March 13, so there was a spike at 7:10 or I'm sorry, it says 4 I think 4:30 p.m. at and it was like 7 1750 the number here for feet. on March 20, it went to 1740 at about 2:40 a.m. the it's almost the same type of spike, same type of drastic um leap, but the the the actions taken were not the same. And I think that's what I'm trying to understand. I I'm hearing that you're saying there's multiple things happening, but if you're saying we're looking at the spike in the water and these are the spikes and it's pretty much the same, but the the after decisions were not, I I don't understand that. And in doing so, people stayed in their homes and that caused a lot of of chaos.

So, let us make that clear to you when we do the afteraction report. And maybe we don't even have to wait to the afteraction report to get you that specific information, but you know, we don't control the refreshing of the data. The data comes to us and it also depends on the period of time. So, I don't know what you're looking at as far as period of time, but that either magnifies the spike or it demagnifies the spike. And we're looking at it real time as it as it up upgrades. And I think it comes to us from DNR and and you I think you all know because of the coverage in the paper, there's this tension between Dole who does not like us to use the word failure. They talk about that and they write about that and they actually have public announcements where they say the city was wrong to talk about failure. But the truth is you never know when the rain's going to quit and you never know about the integrity of the embankments and they can put a water bladder around the top which they did and we're thankful for that. But the truth is, you don't want to be in a situation where after the fact you say, "I wish I had called for an evacuation because I didn't know the bank was going to fail." So, we have a trigger point and I believe it's 85 ft. It's 85 ft at Lake Wilson. And we're watching that every time it updates to see how close it gets to 85 ft. And 85 ft is not actually a failure point. it's a risk of failure point and that's when they put out the evacuation notices. So let us get let us get you more detailed information so that so that I think we can answer your questions better because right now I don't think I'm doing a very good job.

Thank you um MD and your last point you did say that at 85 ft but again I think that's my question. So according to the timeline that was at 8:30 a.m. on the next day March 20th where the storm started on the 19th and by then the homes are flooded beyond. So, are we using the right metrics? I think that's where I'm confused. Makes sense. I believe we're 85 ft was where the Waha reservoir that was 8:30 a.m. on March 20th, but by then most a lot of the damage have been done.

So, let us get you that information. I mean, I I'm only down there for my shift. But I can tell you that everybody is watching the water levels and then when you reach that point, you have to make a decision knowing that Dole and others are going to say that's a premature decision. You should not be evacuating people out of the community. And what we look at when we make an evacuation order is where are the people going to go? So where do the homeless go? Do we have shelters stood up for the homeless? And where do the people that are going to leave their houses, do they have family that they can go to? are we going to ask them to pay for hotels out of their pockets? We know people would prefer to stay in their homes. So, it's it's not a black and white judgment call and all of that is being informed by conversations with the state and with the first responders and with core. What are we going to do with the homeless? It's all the totality and we do our best. And I think

the director wanted that decision. You mentioned that the decision is collaborated. It seems like it's at some point subjective, but who who was the one that made that decision? Well, let um it I think it depends on who's in charge at the time. So, if if Director Collins is at the EOC, it would be him based upon the counseling of the people that are advising him. If Director Walters is there and he's home sleeping for a period of time, it would be Director Walters. So, we can get that information to you. No, it it lied indeed. Yeah, that's what you're saying. It wasn't you or No, but we can get you that information. Okay. Thank you so much.

No, thank you. And I think managing director pointed out that a lot of what we're talking about now can be covered in the action afteraction report and we could have another hearing once that becomes available. We are losing members. I know we lost half of the public so far and I do want to spend a little bit of time on on what we're doing now currently. Um, I do want to note that we've been at it for two hours now, but thank you. Great questions. Council member Cardiero, chair, I can um ask questions, but remember back in discussion if we uh happen to take testimony first if No, why don't you go ahead now and then uh

Okay, I'll try to make this really quick. Okay. Um so, first off, um my Thank you, chair. Um hi, director. I just want to ask for two things. Um two two components. one is just on the day of and when you make those decisions as well as for the long-term planning. First off, um what would it be uh feasible since um as an island community, we may face water levels that may surprise us again to lower those metrics um that council member Okimoto mentioned um to then request for evacuation of a community.

Uh thank you for the question. And again, it goes beyond just the level and um and and just to reiterate a little bit as MD just mentioned about the 85 ft, we have meetings as it's approaching 85 ft. at 82 feet or at 81 ft. We have meetings and we're talking with all the other stakeholders that are involved in these things and trying to evaluate what's the water going to do and um and what's the status of the of the dam and so forth. But it's even beyond that. It's our question to the emergency responders were how much time do you need to get resources in place to conduct an evacuation? That's an hour. How long does the evacuation take? That's two hours. So now all of a sudden we're trying to figure out okay how much time do we have before 81 ft 82 feet before 85 ft. So when do we know when to pull the pull the trigger on an evac evacuation. So it's not just as simple as 85 ft. It's about what the resources are available as well.

Okay. I'm sure we can discuss that u more later when we uh do talk about this further. My next is as it relates to when people are looking for safety. Uh they don't want the kapakahi communication of like, hey, we're only going to take care of city resources and city property. Um I know that people need help um here, whether it be private property or private communities and um how do we just go past a bure bureaucratic bull and then just help and save people?

I'm sorry, can you repeat the question again? How do we get past uh bureaucracy and figuring out where what is what is what we are able to respond to because whether or not city streets, city properties, city assets um and then just like help save people

of course. So if if we can see it coming um then we obviously can pre-position resources uh and that sort of thing. In this particular case, the forecast did not uh indicate that we would be in a flash flooding situation and so we didn't have that opportunity uh to get those resources. We tried to get those resources in as quickly as possible which is also why we were very much ready to uh as soon as we could initiate search and rescue operations and as soon as we could have high water vehicles from the National Guard in place uh and so forth. So um and that's how you do it. If you know things are coming then we put things in place. If a hurricane was coming, we get several days and we start making those those um those precautions. We start staging those resources. We start asking for additional resources. If we don't have resources in place because we didn't have advanced warning, now we're trying to assemble our resources from the the the status of of our resources across the island who are doing their regular day-to-day activities in the police districts, in their fire areas, and so forth. and we're responding based on 911 calls, which are calls in, dispatches out based on priority. And so that's the way that we activate until we can then unify and get under one uh organized structure.

Okay. Um and so the second topic is uh I know a lot of us and many of the community across the island watched the special neighborhood board number 27 Northshore neighborhood board meeting and we saw that uh the CCSR Dr. Fox was called out to help lead a possible task force regarding the watershed study and for future planning for flood mitigation as an island community uh that is facing um planning communities even if they are further um further from the coastlines. And so are we shifting these long-term plannings from the department of planning and permitting and other agencies to the office of climate change sustain sustainability and resiliency.

Council member just to make sure I understand the question correctly Krishna Jarm deputy managing director you're asking whether we're going to restructure who's responsible for those roles going forward. Is that is that correct? So, as of right now, we're going to be as as you noted, Dr. Fox will be part of that group and we'll be taking a hard look at how we do this. Uh, we don't believe that there's anything um currently structurally incorrect with how we're doing things, but we'll that's something we'll always take a look at. And if I might, um, your your second question, I I think you I understood you to say whether what are we doing so that the so the bureaucracy doesn't get in the way of us helping Yes.

the public. And what I what I want to emphasize is what MD and and and Dr. Collins has mentioned in the midst of this. It's all chaos and we are structure and we're trying to make order out of chaos. I don't think at any point any bureaucracy got in the way of us helping people. It's just the circumstances that were there were so challenging and we're doing the best we can. And I also want to thank um council member Tupola for acknowledging Andy Sugg. The reason he was you you all were hearing from him is because he was the designated person to communicate as much information as possible in as timely fashion as possible to council. So I appreciate um the vice chair's acknowledgement that he did a good job in this and and thank you for that.

Thank you and thank you uh deputy managing director for those respon responses. I tried to ask the questions as quick as possible and I'll yield my time. Thank you. Thank you council member Kena.

Questions but I just want to make some comments. I said it yesterday and I'll say it again. Uh since I think these issues overlap, I just want to make sure that the administration I feel like lot what we're talking about it's boots on the ground with not just what happens but what is continuing with regard to immediate relief but I believe that we have to have a financial resources strategy on how we are going to prepare for both medium and long-term strategies. As I mentioned with regard to the pool of funding that you're going to have the the city, state and federal level, there's immediate disaster related funding including um a multitude of disaster supplemental that we need to make sure those are moving vehicles. But we also need to pivot with regard to all current funding streams that could be either reprogrammed or as we're going through the budget to allocate those resources and rep prioritize. Um and that will be not just within the city in concert with the state um and the federal government. Again, I will reiterate because a lot of people did not have insurance both individuals as businesses. The type of relief efforts similar to co needs to be strategic because we don't have ARPA funds. So where are those funds going to come from? We're going to either need to increase, right, or figure out what we could use within uh the confines. And I'm going to defer to my colleagues whose districts were uh were more impacted clearly because uh what what we faced was nothing compared nothing compared to what my uh my what my other colleagues faced. that I did want to put in a uh plug for our farmers because um uh similar to co they too easily fell uh in the cracks because all of the programs that uh were set up uh were not

they didn't qualify. So, I'm asking I know that the governor had a uh emergency farmer relief u program set up um so that while you're contemplating your financial strategy that we also include the farmers because I already know that you're looking at all of the other resources that need to be pulled as it as it affects families and businesses. But um whatever we could do whether it be in relief or similar to what we did with regard to our agricultural grants program remember 60 up to 60 farmers. I I do know that we're looking at the agric uh we're waiting for the data from the department of agriculture but the agricultural stewardship Hawaii has provided some data with regard to numbers. I look forward to working with you guys on a long-term strategy.

Council member, thank you. And with respect to farmers, OER is actively working with the state as we speak. And thank you for emphasizing all of those points. Those are exact points the MD made earlier this week.

Thank you. I'd like to now turn to our public testimony. We have a number of registered testifiers starting with Mark Kaku. Is Mark Kaku President? Aloha. Welcome. Uh, thank you. This is my first time doing this, so I hope I don't make too many mistakes. Uh, what I'd like to point out is, uh, DM, the EOC, has been operating on a level equal or better than the military. I come from a DoD background, uh, retired. Um, I'm a volunteer. I'm a civilian. And I'd like to point out that the first thing we have to do as civilians is take responsibility and start doing things for ourselves and get things ready. and the DMEOC um director has been pre-event event event and postevent has been going out to the civilian population with outreach and trying to prepare us for just this event today. I mean in the past week I'd like to point out too that there was some talk about um was that one minute?

Okay. Can I just I'll let you finish up. Sure. Can I just add one thing?

Um I was made aware that in Mokua the flood did not come from the streams. It came across the fields. So even if you had rain gauges in the streams, they were surprised from the the um and this is family and uh they lost everything. Their car got stuck in the mud. They only had their shirts on their back and from what I found out they had the warning. They were warned. They were warned to evacuate. But being human, we tend to, oh, we got a little bit more time, you know, it's not going to be that bad, you know. Um, then when they got another warning, they said, "Okay, we better pack up the vehicle." And while they're driving down the road, coming from the field, not coming from a stream, the water came through and took their car to the side. And that's what happened with them. But again, with the the outreach, the search groups, um, the way we're handling it before these events, I have to commend u thank uh the EOC, the DM. I'd like to thank all of you for bringing it up our attention and thank you very much for letting me go over one minute and you guys have a great day. I really appreciate all of you. Thank you. Which kind of begs the question like where do you evacuate to, right? Where do you go from? You're not going to go, right? But that was a rhetorical question. Thank you so much. Um well not meant for you to answer that is but I do want to get through the rest of the testifiers. Die Kelly Paddock aloha welcome back.

Aloha. Welcome.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Die Kelly Paddock speaking and I have really learned a lot from this session. Um, first of all, I want to make it really clear that my uh assessment of DEM and their actions taken uh have been right on. This is the best DEM director I've ever experienced in the county, city and county of Honolulu. He's been here less than one year. And the first month that he got here, he was making the rounds to the districts. He's been to my districts at least five or six times, maybe more, because he's always visiting new people in the district and getting to know them and the issues of each district. Every place is so different from the other place. I believe you really have to do that. I've been working in emergency management in our community of Haula since 2011. Since the Tokushima tsunami and earthquake, someone came to me on the neighborhood board my first night and said, "What are we going to do in Haula when this happens? Do we have an emergency plan?" Well, we do now because that fellow was a retired colonel from the army and I tapped him on the shoulder and I said, 'Hey Bert, how about helping us with that emergency plan? We've now trained over 200 community members in CERT training. 200. We have volunteers coming out our ears when we ask for volunteers to help out. What have our disasters been in Haula, you might ask me? the winds, the rain, the power off for

four to five days, the Wi-Fi out. Both grocery stores in our district are closed and our roads are blocked on each end of the district. We can't get out. And our water quality is horrible. We have 6 to 700 cesspools in Haula and we're trying to get rid of them, but all of them were flooded. So what does that mean? We've got brown water all over our community and in our ocean of course and that is a disaster in and of itself. Many many disasters combined. So, I want to tell you that uh the CNA reached out to us and they came and asked how they could help us. And one big thing was helping get us rolloffs so we could clean out people's houses. We did have flooding in people's houses and our roads were very flooded and many people lost their cars. So, we also asked for cesspools to be pumped and they're helping us with that pumping, but it's going to be so few. You know, it's not enough. So, I just want to share our story of our district with 22 streams. I know we haven't got stream gauges on most of those streams. So I hope that in the future we all learn from this and can do better and I think the city council might want to go through a cert training someday because I think it would help you understand some of the questions you're asking

about in terms of emergencies and how you respond. So thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. And I did want to spend some time today if we have time. We've been at it for two hours to talk about immediate needs, short-term needs, and long-term needs of the community. Um because I think that'll be helpful for the administration and us to hear that so that we can help. Um sir, I know in the front row I didn't get your name, but why don't you come up next and testify? Could you start by stating your name?

Aloh. Um my name is Preston Bruski Lewis. Um, you guys have probably all know me as Bruski over social media and whatnot. Um, I'm here to represent the community of Wua. Um, I've been from the start of the first raindrop. I live three houses down from Waki Farm. So, I've seen it from start to finish and I'm still there working right now. Um, but I'll share with you guys the first 48 hours. Um, communication very limited. We didn't know what was going on with, of course, emergencies, sirens, and whatnot. Um, and the community stepped up and took initiative. uh businesses, farmers, and they pulled all their equipment and all the local heroes from the Rita families and the Souza family, Noah, all those guys. but being there and rescuing the families and the ohana and the community and getting into safety and knowing during that times of 1:00 2:00 knowing that the streets were closed we were kind of trapped you know knowing that Wua High School was an emergency um place for the community was getting shut down so yeah we felt vulnerable and lost But still, as a community, we still pulled together and we made sure we got everyone home out and safe. And following the next day, Saturday, um myself, Levi, and the rest of the boys that were out saving, we went back to their homes. We checked on the

families, you know, assess their homes and the damages, the mud, and came up with our own game plan on removing that and calling our friends and families and calling um Don uh the Long Shoremans and they came in abundantly with help. and watching the families come home firsthand and seeing the grandmas and grandpas fall to their knees. The generations, 60 years of living there, they lost everything and they're lost for words and we were the ones to pick them up and tell them everything will be okay. We are here for you. I'm going to get this cleaned up and I'll get you right back in. And right now we are not stopping. And the great thing is we have awesome backing from you folks. Thank you so much for sending Ed, Sniffing, Warren, Warren. We're standing side by side. They're getting things done for us. And thank you for sending abundance of equipment and help. It is moving very quickly. and the progress that we're doing. We already are at the rebuilding stage, you know, now we need the material to get the drywall, the lumber, all these things. So, we're moving very fastly as a community. And I think as a community what we're looking for is how can we all work together um to figure out these problems now and for the near future of our land, our waterways and in management so that we don't run into these future problems that the community will feel trapped or no communication that we can act fast

and get everyone safe. But other than that, thank you so much, council and chairman. Um, and thank you for your endless support. No, I appreciate you being here and thank you for for staying for this portion of the hearing. And I saw you out there, myself and and the people out there working together. So, you're right. you know, Ed Stiffen and Warren and um those guys were out there with you and your community. Um so what you're saying though, you need materials, you need lumber, you need drywall, you need stuff like tradesmen,

tradesmen, but how's the police presence? How's that been? Oh, it's been great. Um it looks like Fort Knox down in Wua right now, but yes, uh the community is moving very fast and Ed is on the gas with us as well and moving forward. But it's not just Wua, it's the other communities as well. And it's islandwide, you know, and we want to make sure that the state of Hawaii is safe and we are confident in that you guys are going to keep us safe.

Yeah. Do you think well one of the things that Maui did you know after the wildfire they shut down the roads and you know I was out there on Kuhill day and they shut down Fington Highway but the traffic along the beach road was was immense and I looked like I saw a bunch of tourists out there. You think it might be helpful for the police maybe to shut down there so you guys can get the work done?

Yes. Um, not to point fingers or anything, but that was a issue that we did run into during our rescues and recoveries of the families, you know. Um, they did have the roads blocked. They did prevent us from going in with our equipment to get these people out because we understand that you guys have to follow an order to keep that um you folks safe and us safe. But I know as um myself as a man, I'm going to take action to make sure that my loved ones and my family is safe and my community is safe regardless of what's going on. I'll put my life on the line for everyone.

Oh, thank you. You know, one of the calls that I got was for a water truck to now that the debris is drying up, so it's getting airborne and you know, there might be might be contaminated. So, one of the things we thought of maybe outdoor showers, temporary showers for volunteers to come and rinse off either periodically or at least at the end of the day. You think that might be helpful?

Um, yes. So, Uh I know that we have our own water trucks as a community. So we are constantly throughout the day wetting the ground making sure that all the dust doesn't get airborne because we do know the severity of the health or what's to come if you we are working in that areas. Um but like I said we we're kind of past the cleanup. It's kind of just managing the dust control. There's not too many people coming out. It's now just on the rebuild and getting them back into their homes. But there are several homes out there that are do still need the addressing of cleanup and whatnot.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Members, any follow-up questions for Mr. Lewis? See none. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. It was my honor. Next, we have Evelyn Lane. Aloha and welcome.

Aloha. I I'm really glad to be here today and I really want to thank the um mayor's office for hiring uh Dr. Randall Collins who has spent a lot of time with me on the um in the community that I live in in Kahuku. Um few years ago we had some issues with buyers. I live at the Kahuku senior housing which um is the low income HUD property with 64 residents and we our our property is in and around the city and county's property which would be the golf course and some other line lands around. So I'd been on it with the mayor and uh everyone about trying to get some trees cut down. And then um in May when uh Dr. Collins arrived, he came straight out to Cahuku and um he's been helping us ever since. In fact, we were supposed to have a medit a cahuku mitigation day started um with volunteers from team Rubicon. I became a team member as well. Um I'm I'm involved with um the Hula Community Center and we all work together on the winward side to try to um protect ourselves from disasters. And I think that the state, the city, the county, and all of the elected officials really need to look at putting more money into the budget for emergency management so we can do prevention so we don't have to spend the money that we are going to be spending to do remediation. And I've been through an otaki flood in 2008 that was a Christmas uh parade day flood almost

many people could have been injured, but we were lucky that that flood came down from Walua um a little bit after the parade, but we had water rescues back then. Donovan Dela Cruz was the city council member at that time and um we were talking about what could we do about the dam back then. I think that dam needs to be removed because it's so dangerous. It's seven minutes. That's how much time you have. seven minutes to get out if that dam breaks. And I was there for the for the fire in Wua when the Wua Hills burned. My brother and I maybe some of you remember uh Jake Ing, he was a fire commissioner. He, my brother, and my nephew were on the front page of the advertiser uh holding down the fire from burning their houses. How ironic. And here we are still in the same situation because we need to take emergency management more serious as a state, as a city and county. Um, all you have to do is go through a few disasters. I was in the San Francisco earthquake. I was in near so close to the Oakland fire that it was uh pushing against us and I could feel the heat. So, I think we're really lucky to have an incident command um director like Dr. Randy Collins because he really knows the system and he has a background in this and none of us do. And so, I'm really grateful that he's here. It was one of the best confirmations that you all have ever made. Thank you.

Thank you, Evelyn. Next, we have Jeffrey Kales Jr. Aloh kako everybody. My name is Jeffrey Kavales. I am a former uh former DoD, former first responder, healthcare professional at Queens Health Systems, uh proud volunteer with the DEM. Um and I've been very active with all of our volunteer organizations, active in disasters for a number of years now. Um but I stand before you today as a private citizen. All of the opinions and statements I shared today are my own and don't reflect the organizations that I have the privilege of serving with. Um I think today if there's anything that we've learned is that we as a people of Hawaii respond really really well. We all come together no matter what it takes. Whether it's the first responders ditching their families to go out there to save lives or if it's the community grabbing their tractors to go out and pull people from homes. We respond very very well. Um what we don't do very well is we don't mitigate and prepare as we heard Evelyn just share now and some of my other colleagues share. Um, I think right now we're estimating at least hund00 million for our island alone when it comes to uh damages. It costs a lot of money to do trainings. It costs a lot of money to staff and it costs a lot of money to do uh preparedness and mitigation efforts. Um, but it as a city, would we rather spend $und00 million recovering from a disaster or hund00 million preparing so that we don't have to have a disaster response? Right? Um, at the end of the day, I think all of us know what the obvious answer is, right? We'd much rather put all of our time, money, and investments into ensuring that our city, our people, our community are better prepared. Um, we have a saying in emergency management that the best disaster response is the one that doesn't have to happen because we were prepared well enough to not have to respond, right? Again, I thank everybody here, I thank the council, I thank uh the fellow community for showing up today. Thank you.

No, thank you, Mr. Kales. I think you're spot on and that's what I'd like to encourage the council to do is look at ways to mitigate so that this doesn't happen again. Whether it's stream cleaning, resilience hubs, you know, resilience hubs are great idea. One, it's a place to evacuate too, but also where we could hold classes and get the community involved, which is actually part of these plans. That's what DM supposed to do. It sounds like they're doing it in your community. So great, great news. Next is Michael Miller. Hey, aloha. It's uh Michael Miller. Some of you guys know me from Tiki's Grill Bar. I took off this afternoon um because I think this is really important. I'm glad you guys are having uh and learning more about what's what's going on behind the scenes and things like that. I'm lucky enough um that I volunteer uh for the department of emergency management in REIS or the ham radio guys as backup communications. Um I I've been activated. Um the call has gone out uh via their system. We get a we get a text message first and we get a phone call and then we get emails on what's going to what's happening, what they need help with um and what the timelines are. Sometimes you're activated to go in and sometimes you're asked to join the calls, the briefing calls. So I've been lucky enough to be part of that um and understanding the different systems that are going and I can say it is very organized and it's very structured of what's going on. Um, so I had that opportunity to see that. And then each person that's in that EOC, um, has their normal job that they're doing and they're asked to come in and serve at the table at the different positions. And it's absolutely amazing

to see um Jennifer or uh Director Collins get up and tell give the briefing and let everyone know whether you're on the Zoom call or you're in person or you're in a different room in the EOC, this is what's going on. These are our priorities today and what if you need something, speak up. Let us know. Put it in the system so it can be tracked. each of your districts had something going on with it and along with what calls you were getting from your constituencies, everyone else is getting calls and so all that information from the 911 was getting fed in and they have to make decisions on who needs to be rescued first and who needs what resources first. And that's where I think getting to know I think uh the director managing director said it best is getting getting in there and kind of seeing how the system works so you can really understand what's going on at at the level and the the volume of what's going on and how many people both on the professional side and the volunteer side are are helping out. So thanks for your time.

No, thank you for being here, Mr. Miller. Appreciate it. I did not know that you are a volunteer with DEM. That's that's great. Thank you. We also have two registered testifiers testifying remotely starting with Denise Antalini followed by Raquel Au. Thank you for waiting patiently. Let's start with Denise Antini. Aloha. Welcome.

Aloha. Yeah. Aloha, Chair Waters, members of the council, members of the public, members of the mayor's team. My name is Denise Santelini. I'm a Pupa resident. As I said in my submitted testimony, I only had minor damage, but I'm really here as a a community voice. Um, I am a member of the neighborhood board, participated in the meeting last week. Couple of key points. These rain bombs are going to increase in intensity and severity and frequency. We Yeah, we know that. So, now is the time to to ramp up. And unpredictability is part of the pattern of these rain bombs as climate changes. Um, second, big mahala to the mayor and his team. the response after the initial period has been really um strong but the initial period I think is where the council members questions have focused and I think that will be very much uh revealed in after incident report I would ask in that after action or after incident report that the public have a voice because the public has been on the you know the community's on the ground they know what happened so it can't just be gauges digital sitting downtown in Honolulu with all due respect fact, it's got to have a community component so you really know what happened on the ground. You've heard from a few community members, but obviously people can't come and wait for, you know, to to testify like we are. Two more quick points. Um, as Kathleen Pahinui, our neighborhood board chair, and Raquel and I on the neighborhood board, we really, uh, support, um, OCCSR, uh, taking the lead on an update to the Kayaka Bay watershed plan, which would produce an action plan, not another study, but an action plan. And the reason that's important for OCCSR and not DEM is that we really need to look at land use patterns and development and how water flows. It's not just about the reservoir. It's not just about the streams. As other people mentioned, the rain bomb was, you know, broad in its scope. So, we we really

think that updating that action plan, which is a strong foundation, is really really critical. The last point is contamination. We really want the city to step forward and coordinate. They don't have to do it all, but coordinate the testing for pollutants, air, water, soil, um all all those things need to be tested now. Samples need to be taken now um and preserved in the appropriate way according to the right protocol and chain of custody. But that's absolutely critical because of the public health risk to um all of those who live in the community, all of those who have helped in recovery. I'll conclude by saying the community response was phenomenal. You've heard it over and over again. It was absolutely phenomenal. It just breaks my heart to think about that the community had to respond at that phenomenal level. The city's response needs some work and I think the council's asked some very good questions. I look forward to continuing discussions on this matter. Mahalo.

Thank you. Next we have Raquelu. Aloha. Welcome.

Aloha. Uh chair, council members, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Please proceed.

Thank you so much. Raquel Au Wua Moku, vice chair of the neighborhood board. Um submitting comment on my own individual capacity. a Wua lifelong generational Wua family. Um, this is the hardest part of all of this. Our community swung into Swift mode and for that forever grateful. I I think I'm more I think emotions kick in especially after hearing the director's responses to how their re reaction and response took place and I think we have a lot of work to do. I think hearing that for the first time really validates my initial feelings. I was at neighborhood board as well when we um had the meeting and I am very grateful to mayor and his team for showing up knowing full well it was not going to be a pleasant experience although it could have been far worse. I am grateful for the city's interaction and the relationship we have with each and every one of you. Our council member has been boots on the ground since day one and everyone crawling up his leg demanding and wanting and you know just trying to understand how we navigate these hard times. We're talking about three storms back to back with minimal to no time to recover in between with each event being more intense. This is not just about the dam. It rained everywhere. Kala was the water eruption of Kiloa. It's she shot out some water that no one could have ever anticipated. But we have a lot of issues out here and

we've been stomping our feet about it for many many years. Waterways, land use that has caused uh diversions of water. um ability to really navigate our land space and provide appropriate um measures to prepare. I think the storm too provided a lot of information and height and we didn't get that the second goal. Even if they thought it wasn't going to be a lot, we were already saturated from a pretty major event. Those things need to be taken into consideration. There's a lot I could say. Um I'm sure you'll hear much more of it in time to come. I'm My goal is hopefully to and I have shared this at our neighborhood board. I My goal is to ensure that we have strong collaboration to extend on the improvements that are needed to ensure that we get the process and plans. It's not to say we didn't have a good one, but times have changed and we have to adjust to the way our environment has changed. So, I look forward to those collaborations and input and appreciate everyone's time and thank you so much.

No, thank you. Appreciate you being here today to share your story. Members, that's it for the registered testifiers. I'd like to turn it over to the folks in the audience. Is there anybody else who didn't register who'd like to testify today? Seeing none. Chair, I was gonna ask if I could call up a testifier if it's appropriate. Oh, yeah. Mr. Lewis, would you like to say a few more words? Yep. Please, please proceed. Mahalo, chair.

Aloha. Once again. Um, so what I was overhearing about, um, the city, uh, you guys are short on the equipment and getting that out to the community, but the community has the resources and you guys have seen it um, from from us just working non-stop and we have the resources. We have knowledge of our lands. So you guys can use us to your advantage and subcontract all these businesses that are already working and know the waterways and know the land and that's how we can work together and get this all cleaned up. And that's just another another outlet for you guys to use and we're here to help.

I appreciate that very much. One of the things that when when Levi was driving us around, we spoke to one of the the flood victims of Otake camp, talked about the stream behind his house not being cleaned. Um, and I've been a proponent for cleaning the streams since I've been here. Um, but is that something that the community, if given the permission by the city administration, could help with cleaning the streams? Of course, either hopefully we pay you guys, right? But, you know, because there's 57 streams around the island. Yes. And there's different jurisdictions. I did bring with me the the statute that gives the city the ability to go in even when on private property

and clean the streams. Yeah. That's ordinance 40-2.4 right of entry and inspection. But you bring up a good idea. Like, you think that's something that we'd be able to work together on and have the community members because I saw the machines that your community has. A lot of them are all their personal machines, you know, and their personal fuel and everything, their own the mechanics, you know, like they're everyone's just coming together and working together. And I'm sure with you folks, we can we can do this as the state of Hawaii. Awesome. I think we still have the managing director here and the deputy managing director. So maybe we can connect you to um council member.

Can I just make a comment? I was smiling only because you said streams which is the most complicated. So uh hopefully uh in concert with council member wire and the administration perhaps they could uh like prioritize parameters of what might be the less uh stringent with regard to impacts to the environment. Uh that will be easier to deal with as a uh because streams it depends on where yeah you got all of these permitting processes that you got to go through. But that's all I just wanted I was smiling. I appreciate that. Streams and ditches, too. Um, any other follow-up questions, council member wire? No. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Aloha.

I think we have one more unregistered testifier with their hands up. Is that uh Tim Gary?

Please proceed. Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes. Yeah, this is Tim Gary. Thanks for having this meeting. I appreciate it. Um, I've been listening intently. I had a couple of points that I'd like to offer. It seems to me the weather service is not reliable. Um, the mayor came out with warnings of this storm early and the weather service didn't predict the rain bomb. Number two, people should not live in flood areas. Is it your plan to allow them to rebuild after numerous floods over and over? I was on the Northshore 50 years ago. Same thing happened. We're 50 years later. It's still flooding. And then I had another question. What are you going to do if you only get 60% of your federal funding? Do you have a plan in place? So, these are just a couple of points. I appreciate all your work and I really appreciate the people that live in Wua that stepped up and provided lifesaving efforts. My bottom line is you can't really rely on government. If we had a hurricane, the same thing would happen. I urge everybody to have their own action plan. Thanks for your time.

Appreciate your testimony today. And may I also refer you to honolulu cityconsil.org, our website for yesterday's hearing. The managing director did a really good job explaining what the possible financial plan is which you can access. And then your point as far as the National Weather Service, my understanding is that the Mokai Doppler radar went offline um the week before and I think that contributed partly to um the problem. But members, it is now almost 4:00, but I do want to give members an opportunity to ask Mark one more quick round of questions if you like. Um if not, we can um go for a closing comment. So, Council Member Wire.

Um thank you, Chair. Actually, I'll just do closing comments, too. So, I'll defer if folks have questions. I I believe uh please proceed.

Okay. Yeah. No, and I just wanted to get through at least the prephase today because I I I'm really grateful for all the work and the engagement by the city over and the state to bring in and work with the community. They were doing a lot of work. So, we've seen a lot of improvement. Grateful for environmental services outdoing the pumping. You know, we have that number too in Hawaiian council. I was talking to them earlier and grateful for their pumping as well. Um the CAC that's being stood up also uh in LA and the work at the um Huh is doing with so many resources too. Um it's a community effort and I think we can all collaborate together and so grateful for that. And then of course um just kind of wrapping up, you know, I think looping in more local labor organizations into your after action plan in terms of how they can be useful in response is good. I want to just reemphasize what came up. DM was super helpful working in the midst of everything with adjusting the messaging. You know, getting as much into that text as possible because the folks without power couldn't open the links, get maps. Um but of course there's a word limit and you can't do photos and infographics. Um and then let alone the language access issues we dealt with um you know from Tagala, Thai, Cambodian, Lashian, Pacific Islander languages. Um so I know rapid response it's hard to do that but we should evaluate how we can better get that information out. Um I think with the shelters you know and again admin was responsive so when we asked for showers we got them but I think contemplating beforehand because you know the challenge in seeing like you know Red Cross shelter at le the the stuff's delivered the only folks there are the school staff so like Jackie Freris you know the teacher we had here was out there um along with other school staff and then you know there was that disconnect with what the district park's doing versus what the school's doing.

And I know this is all, you know, into the planning, but you know, flood victims coming out need the showers and the clothes, right? We had to get shirts from the school to give them shirts, the folks that are shivering there. Um, and so I think just having pre-placed stuff would be helpful knowing that we're relying on volunteers a lot of times. What I do appreciate about current director's position is the desire to expand DEM because we do need a greater pres presence to kind of coordinate that you know to see like oh we don't have the CS over at the district park because Red Cross delivered them to the school or the fact that we didn't have an official shelter on the col side until much much later. I mean, Cuckoo came in early, never fully opened because of no staffing, right? Um, they were letting folks use the restroom, but it closed. I think Kane District Park opened at some point. You folks were flooded. Yeah, had access issues. Thankfully, kind of at the community level, BYU and Key Project both had, you know, facilities. Um, but then not having that in an official alert for whatever reason, you know, because I know there's talking that through with different orgs, but we need to have a place. it's going out officially. Um, understanding with the what, how many rock sites, eight, 10, and folks are trapped for a little bit. Um those are just kind of the stuff I wanted to get through at the front end to share and I know we'll talk more about you know the immediate recovery more of the sess management but appreciate you providing this opportunity today chair and really do appreciate the partnership that's grown um with the city administration and the state and everyone here at the council. Thank you so much. And I do want to because it is running late. I do want to have another hearing at the appropriate time to discuss the afteraction plan and maybe the virtual EOC if we could. We could even do that offline. I think

that'd be great for us to to learn about that. Members, any final comments? Council members? Seeing none, thank you again. Thank you, managing director, deputy managing director, and mayors and the public for being here today. Like I said, I do want to convene another meeting, but um I'll let you folks know when that is. Thank you. We're in adjourned