I ignored a flash flood warning again and walked outside during dethstorm 3. This time I was alone - like I usually was during CONvid six years ago. Nobody walking their dogs. Not even cars on the street.
I did see someone charging their car outside in the driveway. They also did that during one of the previous flood warnings. Was that wise when it could rain? When it was supposed to be raining?
I think a drizzle started after I passed that car. It lasted a few minutes. I wasn’t soaked. The water on me and my phone/pedometer had long since evaporated when I came home an hour later.
I didn’t expect to walk today. I thought there would be more rain than there actually was.
I also didn’t expect to write about the latest dethstorm again. I’m tired of the hype. Even some readers at true blue Honolulu Pravda can’t take it anymore:
And yet, the Tourism Day event at the State Capitol was held today as scheduled, lol.
Another free day off for Gov’t workers, just because of some rains, unions must be happy. If most are non-essentials, maybe no need that many public employees on payroll?! This Gov Green should NOT be voted back. Waste money.
I think GG [Gov. Green] has Biden’s Autopen .If rain is in the forecast he just shuts down what he can.Gov’t / union workers get a break and the rest of us are left out.
BIG MAHALO and “RESPECT” to the courageous workers of the Keeaumoku McDonalds, who bravely and heroically went to work today!!!!!
Getting ridiculous already. I don’t ever remember the state or city closing down for any of the storms we’ve had in the years past, except for potential tropical storms or hurricanes. Then again it’s an election year and Green knows what he’s doing. The saying of “safety first” plays big in a place as paranoid as Hawaii. Imagine if even a minimal hurricane hit Hawaii? It’ll be biblical.
We stay dea like mainland wit da kine snow days. [Pidgin: ‘We’re like the Mainland with its snow days.’1]
YaY! We get ***FREE*** day off today with decent westher [typo for weather] and just another typical modest rainy day. Thank you, taxpayers !!!
Another proclamation by King Josh I. Guess what, it rains in Hawaii.
What, no more umbrella? [localspeak for ‘you don’t have umbrellas anymore?’]
This governor seems to have no understanding of the public life and the disruption he continues to cause with his shoot from the hip proclamations.No Kings!
LOL, turning a blue phrase against a blue ruler. Blue, orange, what’s the difference? MAGAs here conveniently forget that Trump pushed CONvid just like Gov. Green.
They look like the kid who cried WOLF!
Honolulu Pravda’s story about shelters got just one comment after three days!
Waialua HS [High School] no longer on the list [of shelters]. Guess they figured out that having an evacuation center right on the edge of the Wahiawa Dam evacuation zone was not a good idea.
Waialua is in a known serious flood risk zone.
Most of my island isn’t.
Yet we’re all supposed to freak out.
Even some readers at ultrablue Hipsta Pravda have had it with the hysteria. They wore two masks alone in their cars during CONvid but draw the line at a drizzle. This comment got the most votes:
If he’s [Gov. Green’s] going to make a last minute declaration like this, then he needs to go all the way and say that all people except emergency medical personnel must quarantine at home for safety. Otherwise normal employers expect their employees, many of whom are parents, to show up for work. This last minute handout to the Teacher’s Union leaves parents in an extremely difficult situation. The school closures create chaos and a lot more issues than the weather itself. What an out of touch governor we have!
Confronted with contradictory Goodthoughts - ‘child jail is all-important’ vs. ‘save our children from dethstorms’, these readers chose school:
What a joke. My daughter hasn't gone to school on a Friday since March 6 [because of school cancellations for dethstorms 1, 2, and 3 as well as spring break]. And the principal has the nerve to send us a letter last week telling us how important it is that our kids regularly come to school because studies show that lost instructional hours hurt the kids.
That was the second most upvoted comment.
This is setting a dangerous precedent. Our kids continue to lose even more instructional days due to a little bit of heavy rain.
And for the state and city non-essential offices, if they have the means to telework, why not have them telework on a rainy day instead of getting the day completely off. I know at least some state offices who have employees who are still consistently teleworking throughout the year. Why not have them telework at home since they’re already doing it. I just don’t get it.
I get that sometimes closings are necessary. But often they are not:
If schools are not in a flood risk zone, why can’t they stay open if there is some heavier rain? Close the schools that are at risk, I get that.
Funny that they [students] have a day off from school but they still have mandatory sports practice.
Was that true?
Are we so much more fragile these days?
Really… is everyday a holiday in today’s world… Don’t remember getting dsts [typo for days] off for rainstorms back in the day…
A reader was inspired by the story title (“Hawaiʻi Storms: Governor Orders Oʻahu Shutdown Friday”):
“Shutdown Friday State” - a very appropriate name for this nonsense.
People may get damp! Shut her down!
Was that true?
My experience makes me think this reader is telling the truth:
I cant believe that schools were closed today. I had this performing event tomorrow and it got canceled when the event got barely rained on. Like what the heck. We are in a safe zone and it barely rained, like we are not on the north shore!
The North Shore for some reason is super vulnerable to storms. The media don’t explain why, because they want us all to be afraid. Though not this afraid (emphasis mine):
A new study by researchers at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa revealed that the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO), a large-scale tropical disturbance that travels eastward through the tropics every 30–60 days, significantly influences climate conditions in Hawai'i. Their research, published recently in the Journal of Hydrometeorology, showed that during active MJO phases, rainfall increases across the islands, especially on windward slopes. In contrast, suppressed MJO phases tend to produce drier conditions.
So if this happens, the whole State will be shut down [every] 30-60 days.
That last sentence inspired me to write about this topic again. Dethstorm infinity!
I have not seen that study. I could look for it, but I wouldn’t understand it even if I could find it. And even if I understood it, I probably couldn’t disprove it unless it had one or more basic errors in logic. It might have perfectly sound logic built atop fault assumption. Or the whole thing could be solid. I don’t know.
So why don’t I just join this faction?
I support this move in light of the severity of the situation. What if tomorrow is sunny? So what? Better safe than sorry.
That was the fourth most popular comment on Hipsta Pravda’s dethstorm 3 story!
I like this response to it:
When the sun is out there’s high UV radiation and the Governor should also declare all public employees to stay home to protect them from skin cancer.
The same commenter wrote,
Imagining fears have the power to make societies behave irrationally too.
There is such a thing as a rational response to floods. Neither total denial nor perpetual terror. We are facing an engineering problem that can be solved. Innomen wrote,
Storm warnings crack me up. Like the rain is a surprise. We need to build everything to be everything proof according to how long we expect the structures to stand. Building for 100 years? ...build for 100 hurricanes. Etc. Honestly, the only thing that really needs warnings in a sane society are tornadoes, but honestly, even then, if you’re gonna live in tornado ally, then maybe your house should BE a storm shelter. If I lived on an island and I had any resources, my house would BE a boat. Reminds me of the concrete dome pawnshop in florida.
Reminds me of how the homeless floating house survived dethstorm 1 … while our rail system couldn’t run in the rain! It was demolished by the state after surviving dethstorm 2.
The state destroyed something hardier than some of what it’s supposed to manage. I agree with this Honolulu Pravda comment:
If the Governor and Mayor did their job and were proactive in addressing years of blocked streams and drainage channels and fixing infrastructure, there wouldn’t be a need for these frequent shutdowns.
Infrastructure like the jury-rigged power lines I see hanging over streets. Calling that “structure” is generous.
We always go through the same drill with every storm. We know which neighborhoods, schools, and roads are going to be flooded. But we always act like we’re surprised of the flooding. Isn’t that a sign of insanity?
I say it’s a sign of laziness. Coupled with a love of phobocracy. Our governor loves playing ‘savior’, ‘rescuing’ us from the dethplague, dethwaves, and now dethstorms. I’m sure he enjoys supporters like these:
Thank you for being proactive.
Seriously. All the people who are complaining about taking the initiative to keep people safe are not the people you want around in case of emergency.
Which people were (supposedly) being kept safe? Not all the people:
Isn't he [the governor] only keeping state and city employees and public school kids safe [with his shutdown order]?
I reiterate: Flood safety is an engineering problem. It can be solved. I assume it has been solved elsewhere. Imagine Hawaii’s governor saying, “Here’s what got damaged during the last three storms, and here’s what we’re going to do to prevent that from happening again.”
Keep imagining, because this is what Hawaii’s government is blowing my money on instead:
They are to busy trying to construct the Mufi rail [the train to nowhere], the Carr/Wakai stadium [that we don’t need], the Dela Cruz central kitchen [an $85 million facility for producing school meals], and the repair of the [$200 million] convention center with all it’s inflated repair costs:
Here are a few cost estimates from the list:
Roll-up Door Replacement $211,411 Should be no more than $4,000
Ice Machines replacements $1,048,893 Should be no more than $6,000 per machine unless they are buying 175 ice machines
Loading dock supply fans replacement $236,250 Should not be more than $2,000
Lobby door Replacement $525,000 Should not be more than $7000
The difference is $2,021,554 Vs. $19,000* = $2,002,554 This is only 4 out of 20-line items.
*This total might be off since I do not know how many ice machines they are purchasing.
That nobody is willing to address.
… because we don’t have a government. We have a construction industry funded by taxpayers.
It is … interesting that Hawaii’s media endlessly exposes this or that politician but has nothing to say about the construction industry. Or the hotel or banking industries. Are they all clean? It’s as if the real sins of public servants are distractions from the even bigger sins of their private masters.
Is that pattern unique to Hawaii? Does your local government serve untouchable commercial interests? Does it scare your neighbors to win their votes?
Is this Stack’s local focus unique? It doesn’t have to be. Substack could be a platform for a million peasant detectives worldwide dissecting their local branches of the Regime, networking among each other and learning to recognize common patterns of exploitation and profit.
We can’t stop the scam, but at least we can stop each other from being scammed. From staying suckers.
I’m grateful to the Substackers who made me see that voting again for Trump - supposedly the ‘lesser evil’ - was supporting evil. They kept my hands clean in 2024. My nonvote obviously didn’t stop Trump for returning to the throne. Hawaii’s electoral vote would be blue no matter what I did. But I didn’t make the same mistake a third time. And that matters to me.
Da kine is THE Pidgin expression. It has no exact English equivalent. Here it indicates that what follows it (“snow days”) is familiar to the audience, so no details need to be given.
"It was demolished by the state after surviving dethstorm 2."
That's extremely sad. And I think a powerful symbolic evidence of my assertion that our "government" primarily exists to prevent the formation of a real one. [https://innomen.substack.com/p/we-dont-have-a-government]
I'm sure in rendering those people double homeless they did nothing in compensation. Just another slashed tent.
Honestly... I do not understand the lack of revolt. American homeless people must be the most tolerant group of people in history.