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When Christopher Columbus first encountered the indigenous Taíno people in his voyages to the Western Hemisphere, they warned him of a god of storms named “Juracán.” In his final voyage to Hispaniola on June 29, 1502, Columbus encountered a terrible storm that devastated the local governor’s fleet and hammered the colony there, killing hundreds. 

Since then, we have called in the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans hurricanes, their names serving as a constant reminder of how civilization can often be brought to ruin by the seemingly supernatural forces of wind, rain and ocean power.

Today, we know that. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, a non-profit that advances climate justice and seeks to slow global warming, than a century ago.

The Hawaiian Islands, especially Oahu, to avoid some of the worst impacts of hurricanes over the years. 

Big Island residents have often been the first to catch hurricanes, suffering heavy rains, flooding and strong winds, while Oahu mostly misses the worst of the storms that come our way. But as climate change continues to affect our planet, for storms and educate the people on what they can do to be ready.

When I was growing up, I experienced first-hand just what happens when storms pummel an island when I was living in Guam. In the two years that my family was stationed at Andersen AFB from 1990 to 1992, , one of which left us without power for an entire month.

The storms were so bad even back then that the wing commander made everyone park their personal owned vehicles on a B-52 bomber parking ramp, so they could be shielded by the massive jet blast deflectors and not be blown by high winds into buildings.

Because I had been accustomed, up to that point in my life, to living in mostly serene places like Southern California or Tidewater Virginia in the continental United States, I naively had no idea what wild weather was like, let alone what it was like to be without power for over a month.

In the first few days we had to dump all the food in our refrigerator, then for the next few weeks I had to learn to drink powdered instant milk, eat smelly tuna fish straight from the can, and bathe in the form of using WetOnes hand wipes.

The stench during the aftermath of the typhoons from the combination of dead animals, rotting plant debris, and other unmentionables that had been disturbed by the storms were unbearable. (And if you live in a humid climate with no air conditioning for several weeks and have only been washing using wet wipes, you won’t smell all that great, either.) To this day, I abhor the smell of instant milk, tuna fish and WetOnes because of my childhood in Guam.

On Oahu, if a powerful hurricane were to ever hit our island, the situation could be far worse than what I ever experienced as a child on Guam. Our higher population density means there are more buildings that can be potentially destroyed and the loss of electricity from destruction of power sources would endanger persons to survive. Communities could have trouble evacuating if debris or major accidents blocked the roads, and emergency services might not be able to reach people in a timely manner.

Of course, right now these things seem hard to imagine, mostly because Oahu hasn’t had to experience these things yet. But if the fires in Lahaina last year taught us anything, it’s that government and residents alike need to be prepared for disaster scenarios, even ones that are unlikely.

So how do we approach this? To begin, federal, state, and county government need to do more to educate the Oahu public on what to do in the event of a major hurricane. Some of the basics include knowing one’s evacuation routes; having disaster supplies; keeping insurance and personal identification documents organized; having handwritten contact lists; and strengthening one’s home well-in-advance of hurricane season.

Most people are so fixated on day-to-day living that they aren’t even focused on how climate change can alter their world, or how storms can come that put their lives at risk. The fact that many people are economically vulnerable and living paycheck to paycheck also means that the likelihood of people having sufficient reserve food and drinking water supplies in the event of emergencies is slim.

And don’t count on going to the store for what you need last minute, either: Some reports paint a grim picture that even on a strategic level, if damage to Honolulu Harbor were to occur, to restore supply operations.

I hate to say it, but we now live in an era where overly optimistic expectations of safety are increasingly being challenged by disastrous events. Our government will need to prepare for the worst of climate change by spending the next 10 years hardening our critical infrastructure, training our population, and making provisions to ensure that if Oahu is ever hit by a major storm, the impacts are lessened by adequate preparations.

This will largely depend on initiative by our congressional delegation to get more federal funding to pay for the kinds of hurricane defenses and climate change resiliency that Oahu needs.

The late President John F. Kennedy that weather prediction, followed by weather control, should be a top priority for the governments of the future. While we have yet to figure out how to control the weather, we can, with our existing resources, control the impacts that the weather has on our way of life by preparing in advance.

Oahu has been fortunate to avoid natural disasters, but we should aggressively leverage science, engineering, public education, and initiative to keep our people safe.