"Governor Wants Honolulu Airport Prepared For Power Outages"

Monday, October 16, 2006

Gov. Wants Airport Prepared For Power Outages
Travelers Stranded Without Power, Food, Water
KITV-TV Ch 4 (ABC), Honolulu (HI)
 

HONOLULU -- Although Honolulu International Airport officials said it would
be very expensive, Gov. Linda Lingle on Monday said the airport should no
longer be at the mercy of power outages.

Thousands of travelers spent hours stranded without food and water stuck
with filthy restrooms.

As if pictures of damage from Kona and darkened streets of Waikiki weren't
bad enough, there were also pictures of tourists fighting for water and
gasping for air in restrooms with backed-up toilets at a supposedly modern
American airport.  

It was another blow to Hawaii's image as a tourist paradise.

"The event that we had yesterday should have taught us a lot of stuff,"
Hawaii Tourism Authority Chairman Rex Johnson said.

Johnson said that the state has resisted for years making Honolulu
International Airport self-sufficient during a power outage. That way there
would be power for ticket counters, security checkpoints or for bathrooms.

"The airlines have known for a long period of time that they didn't have
that capability," state Department of Transportation director Rodney Haraga
said.

The state said that running all airport operations would take 14 times the
current emergency power. Until now, officials did not consider it
cost-effective.

"It's an anomaly. What we didn't want to do was buy a 14-megawatt generator
because that's a redundant system. (Hawaiian Electric Co.) is normally very
reliable

The state was so confident, it never even drilled what would happen if the
power went out for a long time.

Passengers arrived and were unable to board the planes.

"No, I don't believe we looked for that particular scenario,"

The governor said the lesson has now been learned.

"I think that the airport is a critical piece of infrastructure that needs
to operate on its own," Lingle said.

The governor said money for the new generators could come from a massive
statewide airport improvement program already in the works. Airlines and
their passengers would pay the cost, she said.

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