The Public Safety and Human Services Committee of the Kauai County Council convened on June 24, 2026, to receive a briefing from the Kauai Emergency Management Agency (KEMA) on public messaging for disasters and updates on emergency refuge areas. The meeting also included brief consent calendar items for other committees. The discussion highlighted the need for personal preparedness, the limitations of public shelter capacity, and ongoing efforts to improve alert systems and shelter infrastructure.
KEMA Briefing on Public Messaging and Emergency Refuge Areas
Let us call to order the parks and recreation committee. Let the record reflect that all members are present. Can the clerk please read the first and only item? Minutes of the May 27, 2026, Parks and Recreation Transportation Committee meeting. Move to approve. Wonderful, is there any questions, discussion, public testimony? Seeing none all in favor? Having no further business and seeing no objections, the parks and recreation committee is adjourned. I'd like to call to order the public safety and human services committee. Can you please let the record reflect that all members are present? Clerk, can you please read the item? Minutes of the May 27, 2026, Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting. All right. Is there any public testimony or need a motion? So is there any public testimony or discussion? Okay. If not, all those in favor? Yeah. So all those in favor? Aye. All right. Clerk, can you please read the next item? Item PSHS 2026-0 to communication from committee chair Cowden requesting the presence of the emergency management administrator to provide a briefing regarding public messaging for disasters such as floods, fires, tsunamis, tropical storms, and hurricanes, as well as an update on emergency refuge areas. Thank you. Can we please have HEMA come up? Yeah, move move to receive. Thank you for coming in this El Nino year. And so I know you've been out there in the public recently, but please, this is a good opportunity to help the public in general know what we're we're possibly facing and what how they can best be prepared to work with both KEMA and on their own for managing what might be happening. All right. Excuse me, uh staff officer with KEMA. Good morning, Sarah Lux, Staff Specialist with Chemo. Okay, so uh I had staff assist with preparing uh this briefing to address uh the items uh requested uh by committee chair uh Calden. Um go over these, uh several slides. I get into quite a bit of detail, and then while I normally am not the type that wants to give a wall of words, I wanted to make sure full information was provided along with reference, uh links and you know things later on because you have a copy of it. Uh you can keep it in your pocket uh if you have subsequent questions from the community or anything like that. So let's start off here. Thank you for your staff for putting it on the screen because my laptop did not power up upon coming here. So all right, so I like to start off always with our mission and vision statements. I won't read those to you, but I have them in there just for reference. Uh public messaging. So we like to tell all of our partners that uh disaster and threat awareness, so preparedness and resilience truly begins at the individual and household levels. And that extends uh to our communities, uh through all levels of government and our private sector community-based partners. It's everyone's responsibility or everyone's kuleana. Um that thread. And it is a shared responsibility. In this uh brief presentation, I will show you the various levels in which uh public information warning takes place. But it again goes down to the individuals and communities because it's everyone's responsibility to make sure you have access to information and multiple means of access. Um you guys have heard me over the years sometimes give you quotes and things like that. So I'd like to quote uh President John F. Kennedy, where he reminded us uh ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.