Oahu communities will need to rely on their own people and resources during a natural disaster, but a city official stressed that too few areas are adequately prepared to respond to hurricanes, tsunamis, flooding or other calamities.

Only three Oahu neighborhoods — Kailua, Ewa and Hauula — have been certified as "storm ready" by the National Weather Service, and Crystal van Beelen of the city Department of Emergency Management said just seven other districts — Manoa, Nanakuli, Kaneohe, Waimanalo, Laie, Kaaawa and North Shore — have basic disaster plans.

The department began organizing Oahu communities in 2010.

"It’s imperative (that) communities start organizing. The government will not be there for them. We’ll all be too busy clearing roads and getting the airports and harbors back open," said van Beelen, the department’s disaster-preparedness officer. "I want to see volunteer groups emerge in Waikiki and places like Hawaii Kai, Pearlridge, Pearl City, Aiea, Mililani, Waianae. We are an island. In a disaster, everyone will be affected."

While Hawaii’s disaster-preparedness officials have made strides in understanding and preparing for natural disasters, van Beelen and other attendees of this week’s Pacific Risk Management ‘Ohana 2014 Conference said communities need to prepare disaster plans that address regional risks to make the state resilient.

The annual conference, a four-day series of workshops at the Hawai‘i Convention Center that ended Thursday, was started by the Pacific Services Center in 2003 to enhance hazard resilience in Hawaii and elsewhere in the Pacific.

Bill Thomas, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Pacific Services Center, said the Hawaiian islands are generally ill-prepared to respond to vulnerabilities like floods, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, tsunamis, pandemics and hurricanes, or the coastal erosion and ecological changes that threaten its coasts.

The conference’s partners have stepped up dialogue with residents, landowners and developers about how to mitigate risks since Hawaii developers continue to gravitate to higher-risk coastal areas like Kakaako and Waikiki, which draw buyers who want urban lifestyles and premium views.

"I think it’s really important for all communities to be having this discussion," said Raleigh Ferdun, a member of the Upper Woodlawn Neighborhood Security Watch, which formulated a Manoa disaster-preparedness plan after hearing a presentation from the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center in November.

"Here we are building in Kakaako, which in the case of a tsunami would get hit. We aren’t headed in the right direction," Ferdun said.

Still, communities across Oahu can make a difference quickly if people take personal responsibility, said Carolyn Harshman, president of San Diego-based Emergency Planning Consultants, which helps communities form emergency plans across the nation.

"Traditionally, emergency planning has been a top-down model where the feds told the states what to do and encouraged local governments to do the next layer of planning. In reality, planning needs to start with personal responsibility. If that happens, it will free up the government to prepare for their own roles."

Ewa Beach Emergency Preparedness Committee Co-Chairman Rodney Boucher estimated that his "storm ready" community, which formulated its plan in 2011, is about 30 percent better prepared for the next disaster.

Van Beelen said community preparations should be specific to the region and part of school curriculum. For example, Hauula should teach young people aquaponics, hydroponics and how to forage for plants that they can eat.

"Ewa and Nanakuli are arid, so there’s no foraging for food there," she said. "But there are other resources like pig farms that they could go through."

Manoa’s elderly population must factor into that community’s plans, said Helen Nakano, a member of a neighborhood security watch.

"It would be hard for elderly people to get access to supplies and if lawlessness ensues it could be hard for them to defend themselves," she said. "It’s got to be everybody helping each other. That’s the only way it’s going to work."

Oahu’s noncoastal communities have been slow to embrace readiness, van Beelen said. After a presentation in Mililani, she said, residents told her that they were on high ground and asked why they should care.

"When I asked, ‘How will you get food?,’ they said, ‘We’ll go to the store.’"

Mililani residents didn’t have a ready answer for van Beelen when she explained that a disaster would likely close transportation networks, shut down stores and cut off access to supplies and even energy.

Since Hawaii is the most isolated archipelago in the world, she and other officials have estimated it would take up to seven days for Civil Defense emergency operations to respond to a disaster. Also, Hawaii’s power is noncontiguous — the state can’t count on backup from neighboring states to restore electricity — so the islands could be without electricity for a prolonged time.

"I don’t think the general population understands that about 80 percent of our supplies are brought in," said Hector Venegas with Manoa’s Rainbow Drive Security Watch.

Few Oahu residents have retrofitted their homes or have seven days’ worth of supplies, he said, and those planning on shelter stays do not realize they must bring their own supplies.

Yet Hawaii has the advantage of a network of disaster-preparedness officials who understand natural hazards and have a wide array of monitoring tools and satellite data at their disposal, said Dolan Eversole, a University of Hawaii Sea Grant Program Coastal Hazards Extension agent and the NOAA Coastal Storms Program’s Pacific Islands regional coordinator.

Eversole said preparedness plans must continue to trickle down to communities, whose policy support is crucial.

"People should be interested in their communities and realize that they can have a say," he said. "We can make recommendations, but if they aren’t supported they won’t get passed."