Prepared Hawaii joint base feels no effect of tsunami

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Carolyn (Viss) Herrick
  • Public Affairs
JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii --  Although an early-morning tsunami struck the island of Oahu March 12, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam sustained no damages and none of the service members stationed here were hurt.  Still, the base prepared for the worst by standing up a joint Emergency Operations Center late in the evening of March 11.

"We have an emergency action plan, and in that plan we have an annex for tsunamis," said U.S. Navy Capt. Richard Kitchens, the joint base commander. "We go down the list of procedures that we've pre-thought out and established for this situation."

After the EOC was activated and all the essential personnel and staff were recalled, the installation was postured to be able to respond by not only making appropriate preparations prior to the arrival of the tsunami, but also by making sure EOC operations were sustainable in case there was significant damage and recovery action had to be continued for an extended period of time, Captain Kitchens said.

"I think things went well," he said. "We worked closely with Navy Region Hawaii, who is also the Commander, Naval Surface Group, Middle Pacific, as well as with Submarine Force leadership and other major commands on the installation."

That also involved significant contributions from the Air Force tenant units and commands at JBPHH, he said.

"There were a significant number of aircraft and aircraft support equipment moved around on the flight line to get (it) out of low-lying areas," Captain Kitchens said. "We braced our ships by removing brows in the event there was a change in height of the ship next to the pier, due to the tsunami wave. We didn't want brows to fall into the water, and we certainly didn't want anyone on the brows when that kind of activity was occurring."

One family on the installation chose to leave their home and went to a community center as an optional measure, he said. Four families from the North Shore came to the Wahiawa annex base gym, but returned home quickly as soon as the all-clear was given.

He gave credit for the base's overall preparedness to the "lessons learned" from last year's Hawaii tsunami experience, saying all the staff this year had a level confidence and were able to understand potential impacts much more clearly than when he was a commanding office here a year ago.

In the end, there were no reports of any damage or injuries of any kind, although throughout the islands of Hawaii there was some damage in a number of locations, the commander said.

"Our hearts certainly go out to the families and the people of the nation of Japan," Captain Kitchens said. "What a tragic, devastating thing to occur. It's stunning, (and) it's hard to understand what it would be like here if we were to have something like that occur. We stand ready as a joint base to support in any way our nation's efforts to support the nation and people of Japan."