Disaster center still assists with natural hazards

The Maui-based Pacific Disaster Center, born from the aftermath of 1992’s Hurricane Iniki, continues to help disaster planners around the world cope with the likes of hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

“For an event like Irma, we have activated 24-hour operations,” said Erin Hughey, director of disaster services for the Pacific Disaster Center, which is an applied research center under the University of Hawaii. “We’re the only organization with a global model to assess the impact of any disaster, not just hurricanes. … We’re on Hawaii, but we have a global mission and have staff around the world.”

The late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye drove the creation of the Pacific Disaster Center following Hurricane Iniki’s devastating hit on Kauai. The center opened four years later, in 1996, at Maui’s technology park in Kihei.

“The PDC specializes in pre-event and post-event modeling in risk and vulnerability assessments,” Hughey said.

For 2016’s Hurricane Matthew, that meant the Pacific Disaster Center worked with officials in the Bahamas to estimate the financial cost, map the path of the storm and make disaster plans.

“They were looking at the potential economic exposure to determine what kind of initial assistance they can request,” Hughey said. “Once the event has passed, we will modify our models to represent the actual damage. That number dictates all of the other response operations. Once the storm passed, their ministry of finance, office of prime minister and national emergency management decided how much funds to release.”

More recently the Pacific Disaster Center provided similar data on Hurricane Harvey to officials including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Texas National Guard and Texas’ emergency managers that Hughey said helped “their decision making on when to release resources and who and when to mobilize.”

The information was shared with counterparts in Florida, Virginia and the Carolinas, Hughey said.

Now the Pacific Disaster Center is working on data related to hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia.

None of the information coming out of Kihei could have happened without the initial idea from Inouye, Hughey said.

“He was the first to say, ‘Why are we not using the science and technology at our disposal to support emergency management and civil defense?’” Hughey said.