Council committee hears multi‑agency after‑action on July tsunami warning; traffic, maps and public messaging cited as top issues

City and county officials told the Honolulu City Council Public Safety and Economic Committee on Sept. 25 that, while key objectives in the July 29 tsunami advisory were met, a range of operational and communications problems need follow‑up.

Randall Collins, director of the Department of Emergency Management, said the city accomplished its principal goals of moving people out of the most at‑risk zones before the first expected impacts, getting public warning messages out, and prepositioning life‑safety resources. Collins described an "open bridge" of communication with the state during the event and credited frequent, rapid messaging for preventing more widespread harm. "We were pretty much on an open bridge with [state agencies] the entire event," he said.

But Collins and other agency heads outlined a set of constraints and lessons learned. DEM emphasized that tsunami science leaves uncertainty about where and how large waves will be and noted two complicating factors for planning: short‑notice local tsunamis (30–60 minutes of warning) and long‑distance tsunamis…