 This is ThinkTech Hawaii. Community Matters here. Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is ThinkTech. And this is Mina, Marco, and me on Monday about energy. And we're broadcasting today, if you were wondering, even though it's Martin Luther King Day. We follow the holiday schedule in the Pioneer Plaza, and it's open, so we're open. So we have Mina Marina on the phone today. She joins us by Voip from Kauai, and we're going to talk about a number of interesting things. Then I suppose the first thing, Mina, is what happened on Saturday. It was so interesting. It opened so many questions. How did it affect people? How did it affect you? Well, first of all, I was on Oahu for the weekend, staying in the Kahala area. And I had my granddaughter, who's 12 years old, and her friend, who's also 12 years old. And we were house sitting for a friend of mine. And even though I have the emergency notification button on my iPhone, I didn't get an alert message. But my granddaughter and her friend did. So what carrier do you have on your phone, Mina? I have AT&T. Her friend also has AT&T, but my granddaughter has Verizon. So I don't think it was a carrier issue. And here, as soon as she showed me the message, I went online to public radio, and it was just their regular programming going. And then I turned on... Well, I had the television on cable news. I was watching MSNBC, and there were no scrolls at the bottom. There were no interruptions. You know, I searched up and down for a local station. When I finally found one, again, no scrolls, nothing. And so their friends were calling each other. They were getting calls from other 12-year-olds. And I'm sitting there thinking, wow, is this a hoax? Is this a prank? Yeah, well, there you go. The 12-year-olds find out about it before we do, eh? Right, and I didn't hear from any adults. I didn't hear any sirens. So, you know, I spent a good 10 minutes trying to find out more information which I couldn't find anywhere. And so finally... Oh, then my daughter called me from Kauai, panic, because as soon as they got the alert, the sirens also went off. And she had my 10-year-old granddaughter at home by herself while she was running errands with her four-year-olds. And she happened to be at the preschool helping to clean. And the people there said, you know, leave the four-year-old with them and head back home to be with her 10-year-old, who was about a 10-minute drive away, and she did that. And when she got home, she panicked because she didn't have a four-year-old. And, you know, while I was trying to fill up containers of water and get into a...under the stairwell of my friend's house, you know, it was going, God, you know, where she had really poor phone reception. So it was really hectic. So I was trying to calm my daughter down on Kauai, fill up water, and get into a stairwell where there's no phone reception. So how did the stand-down take place? When did you learn that it was a false alarm? After a while, then, only one of the phones got the message that it was a mistake. So even that on its own was crazy because... And I can't even remember whose phone got the mistake and it wasn't. Yeah, but it would follow that if you get the false message and there's going to be a retraction, then all the phones that got the false message should also get the retraction. But that didn't happen, apparently. Yeah, only at least one of the phones got the retraction. Strange, strange, strange. That was really a circus. And I guess I'm curious as to what lessons you took away from it about the emergency management agency, about people in general, about Hawaii as a place which could be a target and how it could respond in the case of a real attack. Well, again, I think when you listen to all the news reports now, they have talked about other incidents in the past where sensors were wrong or there were other human errors. And it's scary. So the only solution now, I think, is really not to be placed in these kinds of potential scenarios where everything is a hair trigger away. But the other takeaway for me, and especially after being in government for so long, and just reflecting, it's like, why did all these systems fail for one thing? And then the second thing, if this really is the best form of communication and getting these alerts out via cell phones, then how come not all of the phones were activated? Because after I posted on Facebook, numerous people contacted me saying they do have their notifications on and they didn't get messages. So what's the protocol for cell phone providers? And again, in a good way, it was a good thing that the message wasn't widespread. But on the other hand, why did it fail too? Well, what troubles me is that the message was a message of very serious importance. It was erroneous, but it was of very serious importance. And if there had been an intercontinental ballistic missile coming our way, did people, did that seriousness, was that published to people, did they accept that? Maybe this is Monday morning after, but most people I talked to figured out that it was false in a matter of minutes. And I shouldn't say figured out. They came to conclusion that it was not robust enough. There were other factors that convinced them it couldn't be true. And I suppose the bottom line is they didn't believe that Kim Jong-un would actually do it anyway. But what troubles me is that if it had been a real message, it did not have any effect. Although there were a couple of bizarre anecdotal cases where a father put his kids down a manhole cover to protect them, there was another case where a woman pulled an IV out of her arm because she didn't want to die connected to an IV and all these other strange things. But mostly, people didn't do anything much. And what worries me is if there were a real emergency, such as an extreme weather emergency, with a bad storm about to hit someone, I think a lot of people have lost confidence in the system if they ever had it, and they would not react properly so as to save themselves and the community, especially after what happened Saturday. What do you think? I agree because I spent a good part of the time trying to figure out if this was a hoax or not. Because you look at my contained environment, I can't find anything on television, I didn't hear the sirens, but I got two 12-year-olds with this message on their phone. Maybe they hacked the system, eh? Yeah, yeah. And I'm thinking, God, this is pretty sophisticated. It looks real. What do you think the political implications of this are? There's a lot of press all over the country, all over the world, pointing a very hot finger to David E. Gay. In fact, Trump made a comment about it. He complimented David E. Gay for having admitted the mistake, I guess. But what effect does this have on David E. Gay's candidacy in the gubernatorial race later this year? Well, I think there's certainly people that want to see some heads roll and want some sacrificial lamb. But I think that's the least of our problems. Now we know for something as important, you can't rely on one person to be able to pull the trigger. You have to have some kind of verification. And I think for those civil defense workers, this is really serious. And before they press the mouse, click the mouse, they better be reading the screen. Yeah. So to me, the only thing is more training, the double check, you've got to double check, because it's what that measure twice cut once kind of scenario. For sure, for sure. And when you're dealing with emergent situations like this, there is an inevitable comparison to the situation where somebody is in a bunker with a button to push on launching a nuclear weapon either from this country or any other. And protocols do go wrong. We see that on Saturday. And so consistently the same kind of failure that took place on Saturday could take place for a much more serious button push, such as launching a nuclear weapon. And that's really scary. In a world where we're having more talk about nuclear weapons, where there's more tension over war than I can remember, I'm really concerned that this same sort of protocol failure could happen in other contexts, either here or in other countries, and involve the whole world in a global configuration immediately in seconds. And then it wouldn't matter if you got a warning or not, you'd be toast. Right, right. And then I think the other lesson learned here is how little we know about the aftereffect of this kind of scenario and related to energy. I mean, this is something I never had to worry about when I was the chair of the Public Utilities Commission. Yes, we were concerned about disaster protocols, especially during hurricane season, and all the pieces were in place, that the plans were up to date on these kinds of protocols. And we didn't have much of a role as a regulator just to make sure that these plans were in place. But in thinking about this, in an aftereffect kind of scenario, what happens to the infrastructure? I mean, how is the infrastructure affected by any kind of radiation fallout? And if we're highly dependent on solar, how does it affect solar energy production? I'm not sure they figured that out. And we've had a number of shows from Carl Kim in the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center, whose office is actually right across the street from our studio. And I'd like to get him on so we can tell us how those plans are, how those plans may be modified after this incident. I think it's a shake-up for us all, not only in the failure of good communication, but in the notion of the people in general had no clue about what to do. It had been just so easy for everybody to get on the highway and run somewhere for the lack of other instructions and wind up in a great big traffic jam, as has been the case in tsunami warnings in the past. Anyway, let's take a short break, and I would like to ask you about the session coming up on Wednesday of this week and about some of the issues relating to energy that are undoubtedly going to be on the table. That's Mina Morita, energy consultant, former chair of the PUC, a former representative in the Hawaii legislature. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Maybe we can find a way. There's got to be solutions. How to make a brighter day. Every other Monday at 11 a.m., please join us. I like to bring in guests that talk about all types of things that come across the sea to Hawaii. Not just law, love, people, ideas, history. Please join us for Law Across the Sea. We're back. We're live with Mina Morita here on Mina Marco and me on Monday about energy. We've been talking about the issue of the time, which is the false alarm on Saturday morning. But continuing that, we have a session coming up on the 17th. Although the session formally begins on the 17th, especially committees of the legislature have been operating for several weeks anyway, maybe more. And one of the things that Mina mentioned to me during the break, one of the things they will cover, for sure, in some detail, with an investigation of some kind, will be what happened on Saturday morning, the false nuclear alarm. What do you think is going to happen on that, Mina? Well, again, I hope they take it one step further, because we, you know, we do have a good idea of what happened, what were the failure points on Saturday. But I think we need to go one step further and understand what the fixes are or will be and how they're going to approach it and how quickly they're going to approach it. And like I said, if we're relying on our cell phones for the quickest form of communication, then some of the questions that are going through my mind is, do we have the cell phone service capacity to handle all the calls that are going to be flooding and telecommunication services during that period? And I think we only have to look to the Japanese tsunami in 2011 where the telecommunication system, the cellular system was just jammed and people were having a hard time receiving messages or sending messages or phone calls. So, you know, just sort of compare that and see if our services can handle the inundation, because what you did hear from people was, you know, everybody was on their phone trying to locate their family, saying good-byes, you know, to people. I guess that's true, yeah, yeah. They believed it, and a good number of people, a good percentage of the population locally believed it, and they thought their life was over. That's a pretty interesting place to be on a given Saturday morning. But you know, you talk about an inundation of telephone calls. I find this question inherent in that. Who do you call? Well, you know, you call your family, but that doesn't help you much. I mean, you know, you have some consolation and you have the last moment with somebody who you didn't, you know, didn't think you'd have to have a last moment so soon. But in fact, you know, there's no single place to call. My wife, who reacted very well to this, very cool, she called the police, called 911. And she said, what do we do? What do you want us to do? And 911 said, find shelter immediately. Well, that's nice. I mean, you know, the public has no idea what to do or who to call. And the people they might naturally call like 911, they don't have any idea either. They were no better informed than anyone else getting that message. So there's a lot of work to be done here, and I hope the legislature gets into it because I think central to this is our belief and confidence in our government. To me, this shakes public confidence in government. It's not a good thing. Well, what shook my confidence is that, you know, they use social media, Facebook and Twitter to get the message out that this was a mistake. You know, I just, you know... You reached the 12-year-olds. That's what really shook my confidence, you know, that I happened to rely on Facebook or Twitter, which I didn't. You know, I was relying on the traditional mode. A siren, a siren to give the all-clear notice. Or something on the radio or television. And so, again, how do you ingrain in people what is the fastest way to get information out? Yeah, well, it's an interesting question. If it wasn't on white public radio, and it wasn't on, I think, the AM channels for some time, and it wasn't on local television or, for that matter, CNN, which is quick on responding to these things, you know, then we have to up our game on that. I mean, all the media, we have to up our game. It's very interesting that when I googled this only a few minutes after the warning came through, the only place that had a news story on it, this is really interesting, was a website of an online news service in the UK called Express.co.uk. And I thought that was very interesting that they would have information about a false alarm in Hawaii before any of the American TV channels or, you know, news media. In any event, it shows that our news media, they have to be quicker on this. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. So how, you know, now that the session is going to start in only, you know, two days from now, and certainly people are, you know, here's Monday morning, people are talking more and more about this, how does this affect the session, do you think? Aside from the investigation we spoke about, how does this affect, you know, the way lawmakers will handle issues and including energy issues? Do you see any change, you know, from the ordinary ebb and flow or will it be different somehow? Well, I don't think that there will be anything noticeably different. And I think one of the challenges at the legislature is it appears to be, and this is nationwide, it's just not here, but just to be reactive to situations and think a law is going to fix it. And, you know, and then at the end of the session kind of pat yourself on the back because they passed the law. It's because you passed the law. But first of all, it doesn't mean it's good policy nor is it any guarantee to fix the problem. You know, you have to have resources, you have to have people aligned to do the action, as you well know and that we talk about frequently in the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. So that's one of my fears, that everything will be reactive to this situation. And so basically what we really need is leadership and confidence in leadership in the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. Having the confidence that they can restructure and make all the corrections needed for this kind of dire emergency situation. Yeah, and that should be very simple leadership. It's simply getting the organization and the agency squared away, at least to the level of the federal agencies who are responsible for issues like this. But you know what strikes me from what you say, Mina, is that this could suck all the oxygen out of the session. They spent a lot of time talking about this. What about the regular things? This could be a huge distraction from the real priorities the legislature should be handling. Right, right. And you know, a lot of our problems that we face now are really serious. They're long-term. They require resources. And again, we go back to leadership, you know, the leadership and the staffing capacity and resources to deal with these really, really big problems that we have. Yeah, and that goes through the election year, you know, when candidates right now, as we speak, are trying to shape their platforms, trying to figure out what their priorities are and what, you know, they ought to be telling their constituents, you know, the important issues are. And I think there's a risk of them being distracted, too. I think the bottom line is we've got to, you know, treat the priorities here not only in the session starting on Wednesday, but, you know, in the election and in all the rhetoric around the election. But I fear, I fear we'll be distracted. I fear everything will be distracted, and that's too bad. And I feel also that this will have a pretty significant effect on the administration and on parties close to the state administration because there'll be the blame game. And it could be, you know, some people are speculating that David E. Gay lost the election on Saturday morning. How do you feel, you know, what effect is this going to have on the candidates who are running for office this year? Well, again, you know, this is when, you know, real leaders step up to the plate, right? So I think it's, I don't think people will remember nine months from now. What happened? Maybe nine days. No, nine months. Maybe nine days. Yeah, yeah, maybe nine days. So this is still fresh in everybody's mind. People want to play the blame game. But I think, again, if we have real leadership here, I think he has to prove himself going into the campaign season that these changes have been made, that people have confidence in the changes that ought to be made to restore that sense of confidence in government. So he has an opportunity here to do that. But then again, if he doesn't do it, of course people are going to make the changes. So I think, you know, the major determinant for the gubernatorial race is really who do people have more confidence in going forward? Yeah. Well, there's two things I'd like to close with. The first thing is, I'm sorry, we didn't get to our primary topic. We were distracted with the false alarm, but we were going to talk about tax credits in the 2018 legislature. And we'll reserve that for next time. It will be equally relevant and probative then. And the second thing I wanted to close with, Mina, is it's so nice to hear your voice and know that both you and I are still alive even after Saturday. Stay here, Jay. You know, it was really funny because I was watching the sunrise on Saturday morning because, you know, the house that we were staying at just has a spectacular view and looking east to see the sunrise. So the day started off great with, you know, this spectacular sunrise. And I'm happy to say Sunday started off great with this spectacular sunrise. So it was just a little reset button and we start all over again. Yeah, we do. With maybe a more in-depth appreciation of the world as it is. Well, thank you, Mina. Yeah. We'll talk to you in two weeks. Okay, thanks, Jay. Take care. Have a good holiday. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.