Uncertainty and financial worry settled onto federal employees in Hawaii on Monday as the clock wound down to the first government shutdown in 17 years and as furloughs loomed for tens of thousands in the local workforce.
The last shutdown in late 1995 and early 1996 lasted 21 days. The economy, and personal finances, are not as healthy this time around.
Deanna Nieves, an administrative officer for Marine Corps Base Hawaii, said she has to live paycheck to paycheck, and even one day without pay will hurt.
"I’m a single-income person," the 31-year-old former Marine said. "I don’t have someone else I can rely on."
Like others, she is taking the shutdown day by day. She has no safety net in the event the work stoppage lasts many days.
"I really don’t know what I’d do (with a lengthy furlough)," Nieves said. "I would have to just scramble to get whatever other kind of part-time or full-time job that I can, even though finding work in Hawaii is challenging enough."
U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz said Friday that a government shutdown would put 25,000 federal employees out of work in Hawaii; delay military pay; close national parks, including the USS Arizona Memorial; and halt applications for passports and visas, weakening tourism, among other impacts.
Many government functions will continue with employees deemed essential to national security, but nearly 400,000 of the Pentagon’s 800,000 civilian workforce is now idled, with no guarantee of retroactive pay.
About 11 percent of Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Transportation Security Administration were projected to be furloughed.
All national parks and all visitor facilities and services managed by the National Park Service are closed. The USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor and its other related attractions get more than 4,000 visitors a day.
Visitors to the USS Arizona Memorial appreciated that the park remained open Monday.
Chen Hua, 42, who traveled from Beijing with her husband, daughter and parents, said, "If it were tomorrow, we would be despondent. We came a long way. We spent a lot of money, and what a pity."
John Dagis, 67, of Brisbane, Australia, said, "I came all the way from Australia to see this."
Jessica Ferracane, spokeswoman for the Park Service at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, said only throughways such as Highway 11 in the park will remain open.
Visitors using overnight lodging or campgrounds have 48 hours from 12:01 a.m. today to vacate the facilities, park officials said.
Since Volcano House and Kilauea Military Camp are inside the park, they’ll be shut down, too.
For today through Saturday, 50 room reservations and 21 cabin reservations have been made at the Volcano House, the A-frame cabins and the Namakanipaio campground. Kilauea had 32 reservations today through Thursday.
Most park workers will be furloughed, including 35 at Pearl Harbor, 127 at Volcanoes and 70 at Haleakala National Park.
Haleakala park spokeswoman Polly Angelakis said park personnel have notified tour operators and permit holders and were preparing closure messages to send out via phone and email.
Angelakis said signs will be posted at park entrances and at the summit.
For the military, active-duty service members will stay on the job and be paid retroactively. Other government employees were placed in one of two categories: "excepted," who will stay on the job for life, health, safety and national security reasons, and those who are "non-excepted" and will be furloughed.
U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii said of its more than 800 appropriated-fund employees, about 300 would be "excepted," while 500 others will be furloughed.
All defense civilian workers will report to work today and work up to four hours to close down work stations, officials said.
About 3,000 Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard employees, or roughly two-thirds of the 4,400 civilian employees, will be sent home.
Major work on three dry-docked submarines — the Texas, Buffalo and Cheyenne — will halt, while smaller pier-side jobs on eight submarines will continue as "excepted" work, said shipyard spokeswoman Jensin Summer.
For most of the defense civilian workers, the new layoffs come on top of six sequestration furlough days imposed the last few months of the 2013 fiscal year.
"Hana hou," said an unhappy Jeff Hickman, 42, a major in the Hawaii National Guard who works in public affairs and is one of about 1,000 federal technicians in the Hawaii Guard being furloughed with the shutdown.
He and the others will report for a partial workday today, "and after that, you don’t know how long it (the furlough) is going to last," said the married father of two children, ages 9 and 11.
Many of his co-workers are worried about making mortgage and car payments, he said.
The hope of some is that the furloughs won’t last more than a week.
"Everyone thinks there will be a lot of pressure on (Congress) to figure something out," Hickman said.
