Raymond Tanabe

Raymond Tanabe calls himself a weather geek, which is fitting since he’s director of the Central Pacific Hurricane Center, which provides hurricane forecasts and promotes disaster preparedness as well.

This past week has been especially busy for Tanabe, since the center has been taking part in a number of public activities marking the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Iniki, which killed six people and destroyed or damaged thousands of homes on Kauai.

The storm also affected Oahu, primarily the west side, and with total damages of

almost $3 billion still ranks as the costliest hurricane on record in the central Pacific.

Tanabe, 41, has been director of the hurricane center since May 2011. The center, based at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is part of the National Weather Service, which Tanabe joined full time in 2000 after earning a master’s degree in meteorology from the UH, where he also earned a bachelor’s degree in the subject.

Tanabe said that as director of the center, “I serve as the primary supervisor for the entire office — to make sure that we get all of our forecasts and warnings out, to do the best job that we can to protect everyone here in the state of Hawaii.”

Tanabe is helped by a staff of about 40, whose area of responsibility, including as both the hurricane center and the Honolulu weather forecast office, covers about 12 million square miles in the Pacific.

A graduate also of Punahou School, Tanabe was born and raised in Waialua, where he continues to live with his wife, Judy, and their two children — son Trek, 12, and daughter Rain, 9. The names of his children, he said, reflect his love for the outdoors — and for the weather.

“Anything outdoors,” said Tanabe, who enjoys surfing, hiking and virtually any other outdoor activity. “That’s really where I got my interest in weather. Just about everything we do here in Hawaii is impacted by the weather.”

QUESTION: This week is the 20th anniversary of when Hurricane Iniki pummeled Kauai, leaving death and destruction in its wake. What did we learn from that?

ANSWER: I think we learned, as with all disasters, that preparedness is key — that we have to make sure that we’re prepared, even on a personal level.

One of the things, you know, is that people think government is going to come to the rescue, right? And that’s true, government will come to the rescue. It just might not be there in the hour or two hours directly after the disaster strikes. They will get to you, but it may take some time.

So I think one of the lessons learned is that we need to make sure that we’re all prepared, for our families, for our businesses, to at least bridge those critical few hours, if not longer, if not three, five, seven days, up to a week.

Q: In that regard, what are the preparedness essentials, in your mind, for Hawaii residents if a hurricane was imminent?

A: There are a lot of different lists (of essentials) that are out there. The Hawaii Civil Defense Agency, on its website, has a good list. The (Honolulu) Department of Emergency Management, they maintain a great list as well. This would cover everything from food, water, medications and personal items that you may need.

Q: Where should one store such things, because if you do get hit by a hurricane, they might all go out the window, right?

A: Well, certainly. A lot of folks these days are talking about safe rooms. Some of the newer constructed homes may have safe rooms and places where you can keep it. Otherwise, wherever you think is the most secure location in your house. This may be an interior closet, somewhere that’s away from windows. Certainly the more sturdy an area you have the better.

Q: What do you think of those buckets full of dried food that you can buy now, at Costco, for example.

A: That would certainly help. I haven’t tried them to see how they taste. (Laughs). But everyone has to do their part and those can go a long way.

It’s tough, you know. A lot of times in Hawaii we talk about keeping seven days worth of supplies. But for some isle residents, who are having a hard time financially — you know the economy is not in the greatest shape now — sometimes there are families that are worried about what’s going onto the table for the next day or two, much less store supplies for seven days.

We urge them to do what they can, whether it’s one day’s worth, two days’ worth, just do what you can, and that will certainly help out, help out their families.

And for those of us who are more fortunate, maybe store a little extra and be prepared to help out your neighbors.

Q: If a hurricane ever did hit Oahu directly, it would be pretty devastating, wouldn’t it? I mean, with all the single-wall houses, it would be like blowing over match-stick homes, yeah?

A: Oh, absolutely. And what we saw with Kauai, I think there were about 15,000 homes that were damaged or destroyed, and we have a lot of similar houses here on Oahu — you know, the old plantation homes that are single-walled …

Q: But there’s something going on with the ocean or something, where the hurricanes never really hit beyond Kauai and the west and north shores of Oahu, isn’t there?

A: Absolutely false. It’s a bit of coincidence that the two direct hits that we’ve had in recent time have been both on Kauai, but there’s nothing that says Kauai is more susceptible to these hazards than the Big Island or Maui County or Oahu. Every year there’s an equal chance that we’ll get hit.

Q: I’m just thinking of the last two, but every year it just doesn’t seem to come around to the South Shore areas of Oahu. They just kind of go by eventually. But, really, we just lucked out, is that what you’re saying?

A: Yeah, it has to do with luck. There is nothing that helps to protect Oahu or Maui County versus Kauai.

Q: The big channel of water between Kauai and Oahu?

A: No. You know, back in the late 1800s, there were reports in the newspapers and ship logs of a real strong storm, which we think was a hurricane, that actually went over the northern tip of the Big Island, through Kohala, and then it actually curved up and impacted parts of Maui as well. We can’t tell for sure, of course. This was before satellites were up. This is turn-of-the-century stuff. But just based on the descriptions, we actually think it was a tropical cyclone, that came out of the east.

Q: In May the center released its forecast for the current hurricane season. How have things been panning out?

A: We actually went for a slightly below normal season. So we were expecting roughly two to four systems this year. We’ve had one so far.

August was a bit unusual because we didn’t see any tropical cyclones in August, and that was only the fourth time in the past 30 years that we haven’t seen any activity in August.

There’ve been a lot of close calls. I think that’s what people don’t realize. There’s been over 170 tropical cyclones in the central Pacific since, say, the modern satellite era in the early ’70s, and while they haven’t been direct impacts, with the exception of Iwa and Iniki, we have seen a lot of close calls.

For example, in 2009 we saw Hurricane Neki, and that actually went up and impacted the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. If it had turned up to the north just a little bit earlier — a day or a half a day earlier — then it would have gone right over one of the islands here, one of the main islands.

Q: How have the weather prediction capabilities improved since Hurricane Iniki 20 years ago?

A: One of the main things is, of course, the increase in computing power. We all know how much technology has advanced just within the past five to 10 years, and you can imagine that increase in 20 years. So computers are a lot faster; they can handle much more sophisticated weather models, and that certainly helps with our accuracy.

Q: In your office, what are the main responsibilities of everybody there?

A: We have four forecasters who are on duty 24 hours a day. And we issue a variety of forecasts to serve the marine community, the aviation community and also the local weather for the state of Hawaii.

Q: What are some of the other folks doing?

A: We have a lot of information technology folks. These are the people who help make sure all the computers are working — that’s how we look at everything, of course. And then we have our technicians who maintain all of our gauges. We have weather gauges out at the airport. We have rain gauges across the state, throughout the Pacific. And they’re getting a lot more sophisticated, so we can put gauges up in fairly remote areas. They relay all of our information via satellites. Terrific stuff.

Q: I suppose you have office staff, too.

A: Yeah, we have a few office staff, like the warning coordination meteorologist, who is in charge of all of our external activities. We also have a science and operations officer, and that person’s role is to make sure that all of the great research that’s being done at the university and other areas throughout the country and throughout the world … is brought into the office to help out with our forecasting.

Q: What happens if you guys determine there’s a hurricane coming? Who do you go tell?

A: If there’s a tropical cyclone that we expect to impact the island, one of our first calls is to the State of Hawaii Civil Defense. We will hold conference calls and we talk with all of the county emergency managers. We’ll get together and we’ll just kind of lay out the game plan and talk about probabilities, what’s the likelihood that it’s going to impact us, how strong it’s going to be when it gets here, and, depending on the level of impact we believe is going to happen, then it may get ramped up. You know, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency). We’ll certainly start jumping on the calls to make sure that they start lining up some resources as well.

Q: Are you guys involved at all with tsunamis?

A: We’re kind of the messenger with tsunamis. The primary responsibility falls with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, out in Ewa Beach. They create all the forecasts for the tsunamis, the arrival times, the expected height. And our role in that is to make sure that we get the message out, like through the emergency activation system — that’s the thing that scrolls across the TV — we make sure that those get issued.

Q: Are you involved at all in preparing for the zombie apocalypse?

A: Uh … no.

Q: The federal Centers for Disease Control, and now the Homeland Security Department, with tongue in cheek, of course, have a program aimed at helping people prepare for the so-called zombie apocalypse. You heard about that, right?

A: Yes.

Q: Well, do you think that program is a good one? Apparently it’s helped raise preparedness consciousness, from what I saw. The Star-Advertiser had an article about it last week.

A: (Laughs) Yeah, you know, certainly anything that’s going to help you get prepared. I mean, in the past we used to call it a hurricane preparedness kit, and now I think what we started to see is just an emergency preparedness kit in general.

For example, here in Hawaii, we have power outages; the power goes out for a few hours or maybe up to a day or two, like when we had that earthquake a while back that caused a power outage. Having that emergency preparedness kit will help out in those events, and it has nothing to do with a hurricane. It wasn’t a specific weather disaster; it was a geologic event that caused the power outage.

One thing to keep in mind is that there’s a lot of folks who complain when we lose power for even a few hours. But let’s think about our friends on the mainland, who endure these power outages for days, if not weeks, and it’s either extreme heat or it happens in the middle of winter.

Q: I guess we’re pretty lucky.

A: Yeah, we’re lucky to be here.