As tensions with North Korea mount, Hawaii lawmakers anxiously are dusting off the state’s emergency plans in preparation for the possibility – however remote – of an attack on the islands.
The plans were last revisited in the 1980s. But the Hawaii House Public Safety Committee on Thursday formally called for the state’s defense agency to repair their hundreds of Cold War-era fallout shelters and restock them with medical supplies, food and water.
“They haven’t been updated since 1985,” Rep. Matt LoPresti, a Democrat who serves as vice chair of that committee, told Hawaii News Now. “I was 11 years old when they were last updated. Many of the buildings that are on the fallout shelter list don’t exist anymore.”
While the bellicose threats and displays of weapons capability in Pyongyang are playing out on the other side of the world for most Americans, Hawaii residents – some old enough to remember the last time their home was at the frontlines – see the dispute much differently. Honolulu is roughly 4,600 miles from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.
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