Hawaii is preparing for a North Korean nuclear attack. Should the Bay Area follow suit?
I think being prepared like the Boy Scout motto"Be prepared" is a good one. If Hawaii is preparing for a nuclear attack it makes sense for the SF Bay area to prepare too. AFter all, Bob Baer on CNN who is an ex-CIA agent retired now said there is a 50% chance of nuclear war now with North Korea given all present variables. It's like flipping a coin in actuality whether we have a nuclear war with North Korea or not now or in the very near future at this point.
Hawaii is preparing for a North Korean nuclear attack. Should the Bay Area follow suit?
Hawaii has embarked on the most far-reaching campaign in the
country to prepare residents for the possibility of a North Korean
nuclear strike. A missile targeting Honolulu, shown here, could cause
18,000 fatalities. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones)
HONOLULU — For the first time in more
than three decades, an ominous warning siren blared across Hawaii
earlier this month — an alarm that one day could mean a nuclear missile
is about to hit. The siren, a Cold War relic brought
back in the wake of new threats from North Korea, is the centerpiece of
the most wide-ranging campaign in the U.S. to prepare for a nuclear
strike. Over the last few months, state officials have aired TV ads
warning Hawaiians to “get inside, stay inside” if an attack is
imminent. They’ve also held meetings across the islands to educate
residents on the danger. Especially after North Korea’s latest missile test,
some experts believe California and the Bay Area — one of the closest
U.S. metro areas to Pyongyang after Honolulu — should follow Hawaii’s
example. But so far the Golden State’s reaction has been starkly
different. “Hawaii feels like it’s on the front
lines because it’s so close to North Korea, but these weapons have a
pretty long reach,” said Alex Wellerstein, a professor who studies
nuclear weapons at New Jersey’s Stevens Institute of Technology. In
practical terms, he said, “Hawaii isn’t a whole lot closer than San
Francisco.” Indeed, Hawaii is about 4,600 miles from North Korea, compared to 5,450 miles for the City by the Bay. Hawaii’s alarm was tested Dec. 1
following the regular tsunami siren and will be tested on the first
business day of every month. It’s a wailing caterwaul, impossible to
ignore, and sounds different
from the single-tone tsunami warning. For many locals and tourists, the
foreboding sound evoked an earlier era when American schoolchildren
were taught to hide under their desks in case the Soviet Union launched a
nuclear strike.
“I hope we don’t get to that point again,” said Lance Whitney, 64,
who was suiting up to go kitesurfing on a picturesque Maui beach when
the siren sounded.
But amid the acrimonious back-and-forth between President Donald
Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, this is the new normal for
Hawaii. If a North Korean missile were
actually on its way toward the Aloha State, the alarm would give
residents about a 13-minute heads up, officials say. Hawaiians would
also get emergency text message alerts on their smartphones — and a
warning would interrupt TV and radio broadcasts.
Emergency officials are telling residents to prepare for nuclear
holocaust by stockpiling up to two weeks of food and medicine. If an
attack is imminent, they should get inside, seal all windows, shelter in
the most stable part of their home or office — and wait for further
information.
While analysts say North Korean missiles can probably reach most of
the U.S., it’s unclear whether the country can mount a nuclear warhead
on a missile or aim well enough to hit a city. Still, “we just couldn’t ignore these
constant threats and missile tests from North Korea,” said Vern Miyagi,
Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency administrator. He stressed that a
nuclear strike from the rogue state was unlikely, but he said state
leaders felt a responsibility to address it because a nuclear missile
aimed at Honolulu could cause 18,000 fatalities and 50,000 to 120,000
casualties.
While some officials worried that preparing for a nuclear strike
could cause a panic, “what we’ve learned from the last few months is
that the public can handle it,” Miyagi said. “People are welcoming this
information, and we need to share everything we know.” So far, there’s no nuclear preparedness campaign in the Bay Area or California that even approaches Hawaii’s push.
“We are not doing anything to that level now,” said Mark Ghilarducci,
the director of the California Office of Emergency Services.
Officials are holding weekly meetings with the U.S. Department of
Defense and the Department of Homeland Security and receiving classified
briefings about the nuclear threat to California, he said. But “the
probability that Californians will be faced with a fire or an earthquake
is so much higher than a nuclear detonation,” he said.
San Francisco’s network of alarm sirens has been tested weekly for
decades. While there’s no specific alarm for an incoming missile, a
general alarm accompanied by cellphone alerts specifying a nuclear
attack would be used in that case, said Francis Zamora, a spokesman for
the city’s emergency department.
Oakland also has a siren system that it tests monthly. The
Emergency Management Services Division put a few paragraphs about a
nuclear attack on its website “when
all this hyperbole started happening between us and North Korea,” said
Mitchell Green, the agency’s acting director, but there are no plans for
a broader public education effort. In San Jose, “a lot of the old air
raid siren systems were dismantled many, many years ago,” said Ray
Riordan, the city’s director of emergency services. When the Cold War
ended more than a quarter-century ago, funding for
nuclear warning systems dried up — one of Riordan’s first jobs was
helping take down the siren network. It would cost millions of dollars
to rebuild it now, he said.
Public awareness campaigns like Hawaii’s are important now because
“there are several generations of Americans who have never had to take
nuclear weapons seriously,” said Wellerstein, the professor. Explaining
the best practices for surviving an attack can make a difference. But some observers question whether preparedness campaigns give people a false sense of security. Telling
people to get inside their homes “really sells short how catastrophic
this would be,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons expert at the
James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey. “What you
want is not to have the nuclear war in the first place.” Experts predict that if North Korea
did target Hawaii, it would try to hit Pearl Harbor, the headquarters of
the Pacific Fleet. A map of potential nuclear targets in a 2013 North Korean propaganda photo included Honolulu. The idea of Pearl Harbor as a target
brings back memories for Sterling Cale, who was a 20-year-old Navy
medical specialist stationed there when Japanese forces attacked on Dec.
7, 1941. Now 96, he volunteers at the Pearl Harbor historic site every
week, wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt and pointed Navy cap as he talks
to visitors about his experience. “We’re much more prepared now than we
were in World War II,” Cale said. “I’m not worried — our people are
ready for anything that might happen.” Some Hawaiians, however, fear that the nuclear threat will scare vacationers away from the state’s beaches. Makani Christensen, a tour guide in
Honolulu, thought regular sirens could hurt his business. State
officials should “think about the big picture and not jump into this
hysteria unless (a missile) is absolutely coming,” he said.
Several visitors did say they had
second thoughts about visiting after hearing the Dec. 1 siren. Derrick
and Nancy Chappell, 84 and 83, who are from Lincolnshire, England, had
just disembarked from a relaxing five-day cruise to Honolulu when the
wailing started. “We heard that noise when the Germans were coming,” Nancy said. “It brought everything back again.” The siren also interrupted the Waikiki
honeymoon of New York newlyweds Angad and Shilpa Singh, 29 and 28. When
it blared through their hotel room windows, Shilpa Singh said, “it was
like, should we really be here?” But Dean Nakasone, a vice-president
with the Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association, an industry group, said
those fears were overblown. For tourists to avoid Hawaii because of
fear of a nuclear strike would be even less rational than avoiding
California out of fear of wildfires, he said: “We’re doing the preparation like we would for any other kind of emergency.”
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