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Why (And How) EVERYONE Should Make a Survival Shelter Plan (+ Printable Checklist)

January 15, 2018

Why (And How) EVERYONE Should Make a Survival Shelter Plan (+ Printable Checklist)

The false alarm in Hawaii yesterday should be an enormous wake-up call. It should inspire everyone, everywhere to make a survival shelter plan.

While people who panicked are busy pointing fingers at the person who allegedly “hit the wrong button” and sent out a message warning of an incoming missile and to seek immediate shelter, where should that finger really point?

Hardly anyone had a plan for where they would take shelter.

For 38 minutes, hysteria reigned supreme across the island state after Hawaiians awoke to this message on their cell phones.

On the television, the following warning was issued:

Save

I can’t even imagine how it must have felt to think that your life was about to end in the next 15 minutes. In some places, sirens were blaring. People were screaming and crying. Stories across social media spoke of the terror.

Social media users posted videos, photos, and testimonials about residents hurriedly taking up shelter while thinking they were under attack.

 ‘I was sitting in the bathtub with my children, saying our prayers,’ Hawaii state representative Matt LoPresti told CNN in emotional interview after false missile alert.

One Twitter user wrote: ‘My family was hiding in the garage. My mom and sister were crying. It was a false alarm, but betting a lot of people are shaken.’ (source)

Visitors were also left reeling.

California resident Elizabeth Fong is in Hawaii looking to buy a house and received the alert. She said she didn’t receive a correction alert stating it was a false alarm until 8:46 a.m., 39 minutes after the initial alert.

The aftermath of the false alert was “crazy,” she told NBC Bay Area, and prompted people to run around on the streets “crying and screaming,” wondering what to do.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Reflections On “Pushing the Wrong Button” and US Drone Policy

January 15, 2018

A “ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii” notification was caused by an employee who “pushed the wrong button.”

Wrong Button

ABC News reports an [emergency alert notification] (http://wnep.com/2018/01/13/wrong-button-pushed-during-shift-change-blamed-for-false-hawaii-missile-alert/) sent out on Saturday claiming a “ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii” was a false alarm caused by an employee pressing the “wrong button” during a shift change, according to Hawaii Gov. David Ige.

‘Wrong button’ pushed during ‘shift change’ blamed for false Hawaii missile alert
An emergency alert notification sent out on Saturday claiming a “ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii” was a false alarm caused by an employee pressing the “wrong button” during a shift change, according to Hawaii Gov. David Ige. “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII.
wnep.com
‘Wrong button’ pushed during ‘shift change’ blamed for false Hawaii missile alert

“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL,” the initial emergency alert read.

False Alarm Timeline

“I know first-hand how today’s false alarm affected all of us here in Hawaii, and I am sorry for the pain and confusion it caused. I, too, am extremely upset about this and am doing everything I can do to immediately improve our emergency management systems, procedures and staffing,” said Gov. David Ige.

Synopsis

  • 8:05 a.m. – A routine internal test during a shift change was initiated. This was a test that involved the Emergency Alert System, the Wireless Emergency Alert, but no warning sirens.
  • 8:07 a.m. – A warning test was triggered statewide by the State Warning Point, HI-EMA.
  • 8:10 a.m. – State Adjutant Maj. Gen. Joe Logan, validated with the U.S. Pacific Command that there was no missile launch.
  • Honolulu Police Department notified of the false alarm by HI-EMA.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Missile False Alarm in Hawaii: How Wrong Buttons Can Wreak Havoc

January 14, 2018

Mobile phone users in Hawaii saw this message.

Missile False Alarm in Hawaii: How Wrong Buttons Can Wreak Havoc

Should the survival of humanity hinge on bureaucratic protocols?

On Saturday at 8:05 am, residents of Hawaii were terrified by a text message that said a missile was heading their way, and they should “seek shelter immediately.” Helpfully, the message also said, “this is not a drill.” And it wasn’t – it was merely a stomach-clenching error.

A notable thing about Saturday’s mistake is how human it was.

Ten minutes after it was sent, it was canceled, and updates were broadcast over social media saying so. However, it wasn’t until 8:45 that a follow-up text saying it had been a mistake was sent out. In the meantime, according to The New York Times and other reports, more than a few families huddled completely terrified, assuming that they were about to die – or at least that there was nothing to be done about it if they were.

An Infamous Error

Hawaii, which is 2,400 miles from California and 4,600 miles from North Korea, is a lot closer to a potentially hot sequel to the Cold War than the rest of us and is understandably tenser, even without this kind of morning. Last year, they started monthly bomb drills thanks to the ongoing battle between President Trump and Kim Jong-Un.

The error was the fault of a still unnamed employee of Hawaii’s state version of FEMA – The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. According to the BBC:

“State Governor David Ige apologised and said it was caused by an employee pressing the wrong button.”

And though this might end up a valuable push towards fixing a rickety system that managed to incorrectly inform people that they should duck and cover, but not officially say “hang on, not really” for more than half an hour, it is a truly unforgivable error.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hawaiian Officials Issue False “Inbound Ballistic Missile Threat” Emergency Alert

January 13, 2018

Hawaiian Officials Issue False “Inbound Ballistic Missile Threat” Emergency Alert

Shortly after 8am local time Saturday, Hawaii’s emergency alert system sent out a shocking tweet to its citizens: “Ballistic Missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek Immediate shelter, This is not a drill.”

The emergncy alert was sent to all cellphones…

https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/20180113_HI.png

And interrupted Hawaiian TV…

Timothy Burke
✔@bubbaprog

The moment the EAS alert interrupted Hawaiian TV is terrifying

Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency responded 20 minutes later…

Hawaii EMA
✔@Hawaii_EMA

NO missile threat to Hawaii.

· Honolulu, HI

Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesman Richard Repoza confirmed it’s a false alarm. He says the agency is trying to determine what happened.

And Rep. Tulsi Gabbard quickly took to Twitter to confirm the emergency alert a false alarm…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hawaii’s existential choice: Tourism, food and survival

January 7, 2018

Hawaii’s existential choice: Tourism, food and survival

Hawaiians used to feed themselves quite easily on this island paradise. With the arrival of Europeans and Americans came European and American ideas about plantation agriculture. Hawaii became a producer of coffee, sugar, pineapple, papaya, rice and other plantation crops.

While destroying Hawaii’s diverse food system, the growers created a prosperous agricultural trading economy with mainland markets as customers. But competition from low-cost producers elsewhere has more recently devastated that economy. The last remaining sugar plantation closed in 2016.

The decline of the previously large sugar and pineapple industries now make Hawaii much more dependent on tourism as a source of income. Tourists are Hawaii’s largest industry. They spent $15.6 billion in 2016 on vacations there representing about 18.5 percent of the total economy. That certainly underestimates their importance as many additional support services are needed to maintain the businesses that service the tourists.

As tourism has grown, land used for agriculture has declined by 68 percent since 1980. Some of the former plantation operators have turned themselves into land development companies to take advantage of the tourism and real estate boom.

The result is that Hawaii—a lush, fertile group of islands with the ability to grow crops year round—now imports 90 percent of its food.

Importing food is not a problem in and of itself. It turns out that some of the world’s top food importing nations such as China, the United States and Germany are also top food exporters. They choose to specialize in what they grow most efficiently and export some of it, while importing foodstuffs which other countries are more efficient at growing by reason of climate, soil, water availability, labor costs and other factors.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

76 Years of Pearl Harbor Lies

December 9, 2017

76 Years of Pearl Harbor Lies

Donald Trump is tweeting about a particular spot in Hawaii. He visited it recently on his way to threaten war in Asia. It’s a big feature this week in lots of U.S. magazines and newspapers. It has a lovely name that sounds like murder and blood because Japanese airplanes engaged in large-scale murder there in 1941: Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor Day today is like Columbus Day 50 years ago. That is to say: most people still believe the hype. The myths are still maintained in their blissful unquestioned state. “New Pearl Harbors” are longed for by war makers, claimed, and exploited. Yet the original Pearl Harbor remains the most popular U.S. argument for all things military, including the long-delayed remilitarization of Japan — not to mention the WWII internment of Japanese Americans as a model for targeting other groups today. Believers in Pearl Harbor imagine for their mythical event, in contrast to today, a greater U.S. innocence, a purer victimhood, a higher contrast of good and evil, and a total necessity of defensive war making.

The facts do not support the mythology. The United States government did not need to make Japan a junior partner in imperialism, did not need to fuel an arms race, did not need to support Nazism and fascism (as some of the biggest U.S. corporations did right through the war), did not need to provoke Japan, did not need to join the war in Asia or Europe, and was not surprised by the attack on Pearl Harbor. For support of each of these statements, keep reading.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trump Summons Generals To War Room After Hawaii Students Get “In The Event Of A Nuclear Attack” Email

October 10, 2017

Trump Summons Generals To War Room After Hawaii Students Get “In The Event Of A Nuclear Attack” Email

Here is what not to do when addressing your student population at a time when tensions with a nuclear-armed adversary are running at fever pitch: send an email to the student population with the subject title “in the event of a nuclear attack.” Unfortunately for hundreds of students at the Aloha State school, that is precisely what they got in the inboxes on Monday, and as the NY Daily News notes, the message sent Cold War-style shivers down the spines of those not accustomed to the “duck and cover” drills of the 1950s, which in this day and age of pervasive snowflakyness, would be pretty much everyone.

“In light of concerns about North Korea missile tests, state and federal agencies are providing information about nuclear threats and what to do in the unlikely event of a nuclear attack and radiation emergency,” says the email obtained by Hawaii News Now.

The email also told students and faculty to be aware of emergency sirens and to follow instructions on “sheltering in place.”

For Hawaii, which is far closer to North Korea than the US West Coast, the threat of a nuclear attack by Pyongyang is far more tangible. Furthermore, the American military has recently practiced missile defense tests off of Hawaii, because despite international efforts for a peaceful solution, Kim and President Trump have continued to fire insults at each other, with the commander-in-chief’s jabs suggesting that words could soon be replaced by “fire and fury.”

The ominous email also came as the president indicated that diplomatic efforts have stalled.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trouble in Paradise: Fatal Blight Threatens A Key Hawaiian Tree

April 25, 2016

Trouble in Paradise: Fatal Blight Threatens A Key Hawaiian Tree

The ʻohiʻa is Hawaii’s iconic tree, a keystone species that maintains healthy watersheds and provides habitat for numerous endangered birds. But a virulent fungal disease, possibly related to a warmer, drier climate, is now felling the island’s cherished `ohi`a forests.

Rikki Cooke/The Nature Conservancy
An ‘ohi’a forest in the Kamakou Preserve on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i.
Hawaii’s isolation, 2,390 miles from the North American mainland, has given the island chain a unique array of species found nowhere else, including the ʻohiʻa lehua, an evergreen in the myrtle family with delicate pom-pom-shaped flowers composed of clusters of showy stamens in a range of hues from red and orange to pale yellow. In 2010, homeowners on the Big Island of Hawaii began reporting that ʻohiʻa in their upland rainforest were dying without apparent cause. Researchers named the mysterious condition “Rapid ʻOhiʻa Death” (ROD).

On Google Earth, you can see the telltale brown streaks in the Puna forest reserve, Hawaii’s largest remaining upland rainforest located on the slope of Kilauea volcano, where many ʻohiʻa lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha) trees have already succumbed. If you scroll over 60 miles to the west to the other side of the island, the green canopy behind Kealakekua Bay on the Kona coast — where Captain James Cook first set foot on Hawaii and was later killed — is pocked with the bleached skeletons of dead and dying trees.

Scenes like these have become commonplace in the American West, where several conifer species, weakened by long-term drought and warmer temperatures, have been decimated by bark beetles. Researchers are wondering if climate change may also have stressed ʻohiʻa trees, perhaps helping to trigger the current outbreak on Hawaii.

The fungus clogs the vascular system of the trees, making them wilt and die as if from a drought.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Puerto Rico Is Greece, & These 5 States Are Next To Go

January 3, 2016

Puerto Rico Is Greece, & These 5 States Are Next To Go

As Wilbur Ross so eloquently noted, for Puerto Rico “it’s the end of the beginning… and the beginning of the end,” as he explained “Puerto Rico is the US version of Greece.” However, as JPMorgan explains, for some states the pain is really just beginning as Municipal bond risk will only become more important over time, as assets of some severely underfunded plans are gradually depleted.

Wilbur Ross discusses Puerto Rico’s debt struggles and where it goes from here…

But, as JPMorgan details, Muni risk is on the rise for US states, but broad generalizations do not apply (in other words, these five states are ‘screwed’)…

The direct indebtedness of US states (excluding revenue bonds) is $500 billion.  However, bonds are just one part of the picture: states have another trillion in future obligations related to pension and retiree healthcare.  In the summer of 2014, we conducted a deep-dive analysis of US states, incorporating bonds, pension obligations and retiree healthcare obligations.  After reviewing over 300 Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports from different states, we pulled together an assessment of each state’s total debt service relative to its tax collections, incorporating the need to pay down underfunded pension and retiree healthcare obligations.  

While there are five states with significant challenges (Illinois, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Kentucky) , the majority of states have debt service-to-revenue ratios that are more manageable. 

As a brief summary, we computed the ratio of debt, pension and retiree healthcare payments to state revenues.  The blue bars show what states are currently paying.  The orange bars show this ratio assuming that states pay what they owe on a full-accrual basis, assuming a 30-year term for amortizing unfunded pension and retiree healthcare obligations, and assuming a 6% return on pension plan assets.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Permaculture as a Method for Ecological Healing

September 9, 2015

Permaculture as a Method for Ecological Healing

MAUI CASE STUDY WITH NATIVE PLANTS AND STREAM RESTORATION.

It may not seem readily apparent when viewing scenic photos, or strolling along the beach shoreline if you’ve been there, but something like 90% of Hawaii’s species are invasive. In other words, a species had no chance of getting to these isolated islands–and adapting to its new environment to become a new species over time–unless it could swim, fly, crawl out of the water, or hitch a ride on something else that could do so.

But first, we should talk about the difference between invasive species, native species, and endemic species.

Endemic species are those who evolve alongside other species gradually, to develop symbiotic relationships and interdependence with other species within its climate. They are oftentimes found solely in niche ecosystems, dependent on the unique conditions of that unique region.

Native species are those brought to a region by human cultures as they roamed and settled long ago, and have long adapted to the climates they are known to be, well, natives to. The relevance of native plants to the indigenous culture is that they are generally central to its politics, and integral to the culture and social structure.

One may be wondering how native species and invasive species vary if, indeed, there are examples of both that are culturally important, both historically and today. The difference lies in the careful balance the ecosystem maintains.

Invasive species generally take over the landscape quickly and choke out other species, leading to a stark imbalance and deprivation of species that are critical to the life systems of other species. They tend to share characteristics such as adaptability to change, hardiness, dominance, and a prolific method of spreading and exponifying their numbers. They also tend to show up uninvited where humans have disturbed and modified the landscape–roadsides, parking lots, your lawn, etc.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

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