Editor’s note: The Garden Island photographer and reporter Dennis Fujimoto took advantage of a rare ride-along invitation from the Civil Air Patrol, while the CAP conducted a disaster-warning drill. LIHU‘E — About 85 percent of Kaua‘i’s shoreline, all of Ni‘ihau,
Editor’s note: The Garden Island photographer and reporter Dennis Fujimoto took advantage of a rare ride-along invitation from the Civil Air Patrol, while the CAP conducted a disaster-warning drill.
LIHU‘E — About 85 percent of Kaua‘i’s shoreline, all of Ni‘ihau, and much of Kaua‘i’s mountainous interior, are out of ear’s reach of ground-based Civil Defense warning sirens, said Ron Victorino, Civil Air Patrol vice wing commander.
So, how do people in those remote, rural areas learn of disasters or other emergencies — including tsunami, which could have a quick and deadly impact on those along shorelines?
Via the CAP airborne warning system.
Victorino said a lot of the areas, especially the remote beaches, are frequented by people and, in the event of a disaster triggering the Civil Defense warning sirens, these people cannot hear the sirens. The term “people” refers not only to people on shore, but to people on watercraft in the area as well.
That’s when the CAP comes into play, triggering its two Cessna aircraft into action.
“When the call comes in from Civil Defense, our network contacts the people involved and we take to the sky to warn people along the shorelines of Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau,” Victorino said. “Our planes are always ready to fly at a minute’s notice, and within an hour of us getting the Civil Defense call, our planes are in the air.”
There are two people from the CAP, usually Neal Rapozo and Susan Caires, who report to the Emergency Operation Center and are directly involved with Civil Defense operations at that point.
In the plane, there is a minimum of two people, but ideally, three, said Roger Caires, the Kaua‘i Civil Air Patrol wing commander.
“The first person is the pilot who operates the aircraft,” he said. “The second person is the co-pilot who operates the sirens onboard the plane as well as handles the communications. The third person is called the scanner and sits in the rear seat. His main responsibility is to take photographs as well as spot for people in the remote areas.”
Victorino said the photographs are very important to the operation as they are uploaded to the Civil Defense EOC as well as to the state CAP and are the first look the incident commanders have of the situation once the warning is triggered.
“If a wave hits, or something happens, then we really have our work cut out for us,” Victorino said. “We go up, again, this time to evaluate and assess damage as well as photograph.”
Susan Caires, the CAP public information officer, said the state CAP is organized to handle incidents on a state level, each island having its own plane and reporting to a central command.
Victorino said the CAP, in addition to the Civil Defense EOC, has its own incident command operation at the hangers.
About 25 support people make up this command led by either Roger Caires, Victorino or Les Ward. Below the incident commander is an operations officer, a communications specialist and a maps and plotting position.
“Data from this station goes to the central CAP command set up for the incident,” Victorino said.
Recently, there was a gathering of state CAP units on Kaua‘i at the Burns Field air strip near Salt Pond Beach Park in Hanapepe, where different units from the state were involved in a short search exercise.
Roger Caires said the Civil Air Patrol is an auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force and performs duties such as search-and-rescue operations and other tasks assigned by the Air Force. This includes spending more than 10,000 hours over the past two months acting as eyes for the Gulf oil-spill-response effort.
Caires said the major focus of the CAP in Hawai‘i is tsunami warning.
He said the shoreline warning system involves a pattern where the plane leaves Lihu‘e Airport, travels along the south coast of the island, following the shoreline until Port Allen.
From there, it veers to Ni‘ihau where it does a similar shoreline trace before returning to Kaua‘i, picking up the pattern from Na Pali and traveling along the North Shore, returning to Lihu‘e Airport.
Recently, Caires said the CAP developed a second route where a plane would fly directly over the island and start its warning pattern from Miloli‘i, making its way back to Lihu‘e along the North Shore.
This resulted after Caires and Bill Enoka, one of the CAP pilots, visited Miloli‘i on a tsunami-warning flight and discovered a large number of visitors to the remote beach.
“It was almost like Waikiki on a busy day,” Caires said. “When they heard the sirens, they all started scrambling to higher ground.”
While the initial warning crews are in the air, another crew is being briefed, Victorino said. Once the initial crews return to get their data to the operations centers, the other crew takes off for follow-up flights.
“If and when a wave hits, the planes are in the air, orbiting,” Victorino said. “They’ll be ready for the next step.”
• Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or dfujimoto@kauaipubco.com.
