Hawaii County Civil Defense Has Twitter Site (Only Used Once)… My Letter to the County

I just noticed that Hawaii County Civil Defense DOES have a Civil Defense Twitter page set up, and you can see it here:

http://twitter.com/Civil_Defense

It has only one message posted that is dated back to January 20th of this year:
“Vog Warning in Puna“

“http://twitter.com/Civil_Defense/status/1134558439”

Well “DUH” we always have VOG warnings… where was yesterdays Flood Warnings?

Why is the Twitter Account Locked so that only certain users get messages?

I just mailed the following letter off to county officials. I will wait and see what their response is.

1. I would like to know how many Hawaii County Residents have signed up for the $40,000 Phone Alert System that the County is paying for: http://www.hawaii-county.com/cd/message.htm

I understand this first year is free and subsequent years will be $40,000! This seems like a large chunk of change for something that has not been proven effective.

2. I would like to know where the Civil Defense warnings were that West Hawaii was flooding yesterday.

3. The only way I heard about the Flooding was through a Twitter Message put out by KWXX: http://twitter.com/KWXX/statuses/1201758225

4. Hawaii County Has A Civil Defense Twitter site… why is it not being used?

Tweets by Civil_Defense

Thank you for any response you may help me find out,

Sincerely,

Damon Tucker

Australian Officials to Use Phone Alert System Similar to Big Islands

The recent disaster of the Fires in Australia have lead officials to look back at the Big Island Phone Alert system.

In October of last year, the Big Island Civil Defense implemented a phone alert system throughout the Big Island of Hawaii.

The Hawai’i County Civil Defense Agency has just acquired a new Mass Emergency Notification System, which allows for County agencies to easily notify the public in the event of emergencies.

The City Watch is an electronic notification system that can notify residents about evacuations or other emergency measures via phone or email…

…The pilot stage of the project will be free to the County, and subsequent years the County will pay an annual fee of approximately $40,000. The system is used in numerous communities, notably in California amid the recent spate of wildfires…

KINGLAKE, Australia (AP) — The federal government said Thursday it will clear away hurdles that have stalled a nationwide fire alert telephone system, after thousands of people were caught by surprise by the most deadly wildfires in Australia’s history…
…Attorney General Robert McClelland said the plan had been raised in 2004 under the previous government, but state officials had failed to agree on details and no steps have been taken to change privacy laws that bar emergency services from accessing the national telephone number data base.

“Clearly a warning system would be useful,” McClelland told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. He said had advocated a system that sends a barrage of automated messages to all phones in a targeted geographic area since he saw a similar system in action in Hawaii…

More Here