Question: Can someone at Hawaiian Telcom please provide updates to those who have lost their landline telephone service resulting from the storm on Dec. 6? I noticed that Hawaiian Electric has been providing updates to their customers via Twitter but Hawaiian Telcom has communicated nothing regarding status except for a very generic statement on their web page. I am a kupuna whose landline telephone is a lifeline for help and assistance.
Answer: As of late Friday afternoon, Hawaiian Telcom had resolved more than 4,000 customer issues caused by the storm and still had about 1,000 landline outages statewide requiring a visit from a technician, said Ann Nishida, a company spokeswoman.
“Our teams are actively working to resolve these issues as quickly as possible. Customers are still calling in to report trouble so our call volume remains higher than average. We thank our customers for their continued patience and ask them to please bear with us as we work through this. Our crews will be working overtime and through the weekend to resolve as many issues as possible. Our services are quite different from Hawaiian Electric. While they provide one type of service, we provide many (phone, internet, TV, business services, etc.) so it’s more challenging for us to aggregate,” Nishida said in an email.
With your permission, we forwarded your contact information to Nishida, who followed up to say that a technician would visit your home the next day.
The company’s website said Friday that customers may still be experiencing problems with phone, TV and internet services related to the storm and subsequent power outages, and that wait times to report problems by phone may be longer than usual. Problems may be reported online, through a form at bit.ly/SupportTix, without holding on the phone.
Q: Regarding the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility and its close proximity to a major Oahu aquifer, there needs to be more discussion about the fact that the fuel tanks’ location makes our drinking-water aquifer a ripe target for attack. Tanks are only about 100 feet above the aquifer. An enemy could destroy the jet fuel and our drinking water at the same time. Bunker-busting bombs, ICBMs and other modern weapons did not exist when this underground facility was built as “state of the art” during World War II. Please ask the Navy what — if anything — can keep the fuel tanks from being destroyed by modern weapons of war?
A: “Throughout Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and across the nation, numerous safety protocols and precautions are in place to ensure the security and stability of our nation and our seas. We relentlessly work to prepare for the possibility of enemy attack, continuously developing new operational concepts and methodologies so we are always ready to face any challenges that we may face,” Lt. Cmdr. Marissa Huhmann, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, replied in response to your question.
Q: How many households with contaminated water had to relocate?
A: More than 3,000 families on the Navy’s tainted water-distribution system had moved to Oahu hotels as of Friday, a Navy official said at a legislative briefing. It’s unclear when they will be able to return to their homes.
Q: Recently e-waste recycling resumed at certain sites. Will there be any for paper shredding? It’s been some time since the last AARP one.
A: The AARP and Access Information Protected suspended their popular document-shredding community events during the pandemic. An AARP spokeswoman said they hope to offer this periodic free service again in May, but none has been set and it will depend on the COVID-19 situation at that time. At past events, people could drop off two business-sized boxes or bags of confidential records for secure destruction without a fee.
You can pay to shred documents at Goodwill Hawaii’s Security Solution Document Destruction, some UPS or FedEx stores or similar businesses.
Write to Kokua Line at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-500, Honolulu, HI 96813; call 808-529-4773; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.
