Having worked in and around the field of emergency planning and preparedness most of my adult life, I was shocked at the devastation and loss of lives that occurred in the recent wildfires in Hawaii and the many failures I saw in their preparedness for such an event.  I immediately felt that the Hawaiian emergency management leaders were accountable for the inadequate response and ultimately the terrible loss of lives that occurred, now being reported as over 110.

The situation there, however, is not much different than emergencies that have occurred in other parts of the country.  Hurricanes, tornadoes, and industrial accidents can all cause significant devastation and loss of life to occur.  Events like this are called emergencies for a reason.  They are unexpected and regularly occur at the worst possible moment, usually involve new conditions that were previously never experienced (at least to the people involved), and include additional extraneous events that normally wouldn’t be a big deal but add to and increase the extent or impact of the emergency.  I see this in spades looking at what took place in Hawaii which are too numerous to discuss here.  But what I think about now is what are the lessons learned we can take from this, specifically to where we live.   

Terrie and I live in the mountains around the city of Altoona.  The mountains have always provided some comfort to me for the protection they provide from nature’s wrath, such as tornadoes which are rare here in contrast to the numerous tornado tragedies that occur every year in the flat middle portions of the country.  And the mountains seem to force the clouds to bring us rain since unlike out west where there are large dry desert areas, Pennsylvania is lush with trees and greenery.  It makes me believe we would never experience an event like that which just occurred in Hawaii.  Of course, they never thought such an event would occur there either.  What worries me about Altoona is how close the houses are built to each other, barely a walkway between most.  Our fire departments are able to put out most house fires before they spread, but could they if we had sustained high winds that caused the fire to rapidly jump from house to house like in Hawaii?  And what if we were in the grips of a bad drought season and the forest in Sinking Valley (where we live) were to catch on fire and spread quickly?  How would residents get notified? One thing is for sure, emergency planners must never rest on their laurels.  They must be constantly thinking of “what if” and how to respond to such events, no matter how unlikely they may be.  I hope our local emergency management team is doing just that and thinking about Hawaii and what can be learned from it; since as was shown, the results of lax emergency preparedness can be catastrophic.