THE LONELY GURGLE

THE LONELY GURGLE: Anyone who has perused this space recently would think that the spate of 11 drowning on Kaua`i this year and the tourism industry's tepid response is an obsession of ours worthy of Melville novel.

Well, dial 1-800-Ishmael. It's apparently been left to us to point out the less-than-in-your-face visitor industry tactics that have not only failed to make tourists sit up and take notice of the fact that DEATH AWAITS YOU OFFSHORE- or even on the edge of it in a few cases- but have actually obscured the dangers that await visitors in the water, fearing that an effectively alarming effort would cause visitors to stay away in droves.

But this past week or so our in-box has been inundated by readers from Florida to Seattle with copies of an article actually calling out local efforts to play down the dangers of the ocean.

So what local publication was it that had the guts to publish a piece that challenges the number one private enterprise in the islands and was so shocking it got picked up across the nation?

The answer? There wasn't a one... a local one at least.

Rather, it was from the Associated Press (AP) wire service, a national- indeed international- enterprise. The article didn't even have a "dateline" indicating it could have been written anywhere.

Now that the cat is out of the bag on the mainland it has apparently become almost impossible for our "newspaper of record"- The Honolulu Star-Advertiser- to ignore that side of the story after running half a dozen "they're doing all they can" pieces.

Today they published- behind their "pay-wall" no less- not a local investigative no-holds-barred expose of the way the tourism industry is murdering tourists for money but the week-plus-old AP piece that everyone except Hawai`i denizens has been seeing for more than a week.

Of course not to be outdone, Civil Beat, the on-line competitor to the S-A, posted a link to a copy of the AP piece from "News12" in Brooklyn, NY... as part of a blog post in which a dozen other links to local news items appeared.

We previously written a series of posts, detailing, among other things, the slick and particularly un-scarry "oh by the way- don't drown" video produced by Mr. Tourism, former Councilmember and still TV star Dickie Chang and gushingly supported by both the Kaua`i Visitors' Bureau and the Kaua`i Ocean Safety Council as well as other tourism industry big-wigs.

Our basic contention has been that, as we said in early March,:

The message we're getting (from the tourism industry and kow-towing "ocean safety" crowd) is "we're doing all we can and we're going to do more to make sure we send a non-threatening, non-scarey message."

Somewhere there's a disconnect here because wherever we go all we hear is people saying that the tourism industry is responsible and needs to change the content of their warnings, not just put up more and bigger TV screens at the airport baggage claim showing beautiful ocean scenes and a whispered voice-over saying "please try to be careful."

The old "if in doubt, don’t go out" adage is obviously not working. Is it to the point where we need ads with pictures of the bloated corpses of drowning victims with something like "The ocean is a killer- this could be you" written across them?

Is it possible to go too far in the other direction? Probably. But the answer to sending out an ineffective message is not to simply make sure that message is repeated more often in more places.

As to the AP article itself it achieves many of its goal through understatement. But this quote from State Rep. Tom Brower (D, Waikiki-Ala Moana-Kakaako) is shocking for the fact that he actually gave voice to what we've been assuming all the other mucky-mucks are thinking. According to the article:

Some legislators think the proposed video might unnecessarily raise fears or hurt the state's idyllic reputation among tourists.

"You don't want to be on a plane and see people getting eaten by sharks..." He added that ocean safety education is important, but "you don't want to beat people over the head with it."

No- better they die than not come, eh Tom?

He's not alone. The AP goes into detail about how the legislature did do something- they passed a non-binding resolution politely asking the airlines to play that half-hearted "nothing to see here" Chang video.

While some airlines hemmed and hawed and basically said "you first" to each other, they couldn't even get a comment out of the rest as to why they won't play it on-board their flights and have left it for Kaua`i County to play it in the Lihu`e airport baggage-claim area- where tourists always want to linger and watch videos instead of grabbing their bags and getting the hell out of there and into the ocean... where they can drown-in-peace.

There has been a respite in the drownings of late- apparently even the tourism industry’s best efforts couldn't keep visitors from hearing about this year's ocean die-in.

But the all-powerful grip of the visitor industry on matters of life and death remains the county's dirty little "pay no attention to the man behind the screen" official state secret that will undoubtedly take more lives once the current hub-bub dies down.

TOUGH SELL

TOUGH SELL: A couple is trying out a new restaurant.

"The food here is terrible" she says. "Yeah," he says, "and such small portions."

That really old joke seems to sum up the tourism industry's schizophrenic and tone-deaf response to the continuing string of drowning deaths on Kaua`i- now up to nine this year alone- as summed up in today's "let's do more of the same" solution detailed detailed in today's local newspaper by Dr. Monty Downs, emergency room physician and President of the Kaua`i Lifeguard Association.

Dr. Downs has been tireless in his decades-long quest to stop ocean deaths; no one has done more to get the message out that the ocean can be a dangerous place. The problem is that the message is being delivered by those who have a basic conflict-of-interest in wanting to make sure the Disneyland image of Kaua`i as a "safe paradise" remains first and foremost in their advertising.

That assures that any message designed to warn people of the dangers the ocean presents is presented in as innocuous a way possible... a way that assures full airplanes and hotel rooms and does little or nothing to alert tourists to the fact that they can easily die when they go in the water- or ever get too close when waves are breaking on land.

And so unfortunately, rather than rethink the content of the message Dr. Downs has seemingly been sipping on the Kaua`i Visitors Bureau (KVB) Kool Aid and has agreed that the solution is to continue to keep serving the bad food and just increase the portion sizes.

He starts by asking the right questions, saying:

With our heartrending start to 2013, this is a question that I am frequently asked. The visitor industry is all about attracting and welcoming people to visit our legendary destination.

Does it do a good enough job of keeping our invited guests safe while they’re here?

Does it inform them of risks they take when they visit our beaches here?

But the answer he gives is not the same one we hear in the market, on the street and in social media: it's time to change the "don't scare the tourists away" message rather than double down on more of the same.

Cajoling visitors has not worked- it's time to get their attention and then scare the crap out of them.

The bulk of the article goes on to lists all the tourism-related businesses and all they are doing to make sure that the "oh yeah and by the way- please be careful in the ocean" message is sent in way that goes in one ear and out the other.

It ends by saying:

These are examples of what the visitor industry is doing. Can the industry do more? The answer is yes. But having answered this question with a yes, I (as a hospital employee and therefore a beneficiary of our visitors) immediately have to ask the question: Can I do more? Can KLA do more?

The answer again is yes....

We are doing a lot, we really are. We have to try and believe in ourselves even in our difficult, tragic — and for me, humiliating — times. Yes, we can do more. As they say in sports training: It isn’t always how hard you work, it’s how smart you work. KLA will try and help us all figure out how to do both.

The problem is that rather than looking at this like the public heath issue that it is we give lip service to the public heath aspect and then treat it like a question of marketing, turning it into a KVB-style advertising "blitz" using the same smiley-face content, whether that's been effective or not.

We don't need a new way to deliver the current message, we need to actually change the message and scare the b'jeezus out of people whose lack of respect and indeed lack of fear of the ocean is what leads to their deaths. Yet it seems that everyone is afraid to take on the industry's apparent attitude that it doesn't matter if tourists die in the ocean as long as it doesn't create bad publicity.

The message we're getting is "we're doing all we can and we're going to do more to make sure we send a non-threatening, non-scarey message."

Somewhere there's a disconnect here because wherever we go all we hear is people saying that the tourism industry is responsible and needs to change the content of their warnings, not just put up more and bigger TV screens at the airport baggage claim showing beautiful ocean scenes and a whispered voice-over saying "please try to be careful."

The old "if in doubt, don’t go out" adage is obviously not working. Is it to the point where we need ads with pictures of the bloated corpses of drowning victims with something like "The ocean is a killer- this could be you" written across them?

Is it possible to go too far in the other direction? Probably. But the answer to sending out an ineffective message is not to simply make sure that message is repeated more often in more places.

DEAD IS DEAD

DEAD IS DEAD: We can sympathize. Travel does make you sort of move around in your own little mindless bubble.

"How do we get from point A to point B today so we can see and do X, Y and Z that we saw in the guide book or that our friends told us about?" All else is just a silly obstacle that is meant for someone else, not us.

When checking to see if we have brought everything- camera, toothpaste, credit cards, stun gun- we seem to consistently leave one thing at home... our brains.

Yes the brainless tourist. Here on Kaua`i we see them every day and become them when we venture off-island. The inevitable result is that, as an article on the local newspaper yesterday reminded us (as if we needed reminding):

In less than two months, Kaua‘i’s waters have claimed the lives of six individuals — five of them tourists — compared to a total of four drownings, two ocean and two freshwater, in 2012.

So what's the response?

According to the article Dr. Monty Downs, emergency room doctor and president of the Kaua`i Lifeguard Association:

“Even when things are going well, I’m kind of fearful of what can happen,” Downs said. “We thought we were getting somewhere and came to find out we weren’t.”

Like many others, Downs said the major issue is visitors “not being informed” about Kaua‘i’s dangerous ocean conditions.

They're just not being informed. eh? This implies that while the message is right we just presumably need to get it out there better or more. The article continues...

Sue Kanoho of the Kaua`i Visitors Bureau (KVB) agreed, but said there are a wide variety of resources out there.

“Every year we try to do something better,” she said. “At some point, it needs to be everybody sharing the same information.”

And what "information" is that? The idea is apparently that we're doing the right thing, just not enough if it. If we could just reach more people with the same message we're sending now, we could save more lives.

But guess what- we are NOT doing all we can to stop people from drowning, as this article tries to claim. We need to be stark in what we tell tourists. "Please try to be safe" isn't cutting it.

The fact is that the KVB doesn't want a more strongly worded message for fear of scaring the tourists away.

It's time for the obvious solution: how about big warning boxes as you book your Hawai`i vacation, big banners you can see as you board the plane, as you're leaving the airport baggage claim area and above all at the check-in desks at all the hotels and in every restaurant... and finally, on placards on the desks next to all the TV in every hotel room....all saying something along the lines of:

"DEATH awaits you in the ocean. People JUST LIKE YOU go into the water and DIE ALL THE TIME, sometimes even in calm, waist deep water. Sometimes they get swept in and DIE JUST STANDING ON THE SHORE near breaking waves.

Do not think you are special- YOU CAN AND WILL DIE TOO if you leave your brain behind when you come here and go to the beach. This is not Malibu. You are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Swimming ONLY at beaches with lifeguards may be the ONLY WAY to increase you chances of NOT DYING IN THE OCEAN."

We're not sure if even this will work but we do know that KVB and HVB have been blocking such stark language from appearing so as to avoid scaring off tourists. That has been the case since people suggested it 30 years ago.

Dr. Downs; you have the power to push the visitors' bureaus into using language that may cut through the lack of attention to their surrounding that tourist apparently embrace. You've done incredible work focusing all of us on ocean safety. There's just one more step- let's scare the b'geezus out of 'em

WHICH WAY IS UP?

WHICH WAY IS UP?: Excuse us if we’re off chasing a pet peeve today but this weekend’s rescue in Hanakapi`ai has highlighted a problem somewhere in describing island locations.

We’re not quite sure where the problem is but we’re pretty sure it’s once again promulgated confusing if not erroneous information being disseminated.

Though the county press release doesn’t appear on the county web site today, the “lede” in the local newspaper says:

A multi-agency response Sunday afternoon led to the successful recovery of a family who got into trouble off Hanakapi`ai Beach on Na Pali Coast, a county press release states.

A 43-year-old father and his two sons, ages 10 and 12, were rescued from a cave west of Hanakapi`ai Beach on Sunday after a long operation, the release states (emphasis added).

Two problems appear to those who know Hanakapi`ai as well those who’ve noted a fairly recent penchant in describing directions in both county press releases and stories in the local newspaper.

First of all, while there are a couple of “temporary” caves that “appear” on the Ke`e Beach side of Hanakapi`ai – usually in the summer but sometimes in the spring- there are never any that appear “around a bend” on the Kalalau side.

You can probably see where we’re going here especially after reading this penultimate sentence in the newspaper which says:

Since 1970, there have been over 30 drowning deaths at Hanakapi`ai, according to various sources including Patrick Durkin’s Kaua`i Beach Hazard Survey and the Web site teok.com (The Edge Of Kaua`i Investigations), which indicates people getting swept westward from Hanakapi`ai Beach normally find no safe exit point for three to six miles (emphasis added).

That, as we said, is because there aren’t any. We suspect the editor might have known that but accepted the “west” description given by the county at face value and sought to reconcile it by describing a rather miraculous appearance of a cave on the Kalalau side.

It’s all because whomever is giving directions- whether the county or the paper- is using the continental designations of “east, west, north and south” rather than the island-friendly mauka and makai for toward the mountains and toward ocean and. more to the point, common reference points- such as Ke`e and Kalalau or `Ewa and Diamondhead in Honolulu- to indicate direction around the island.

This results in the wrong directions being reported because very few places are really strictly east or west as they move in a circular manner rather than straight lines. That’s has led to “choke” confusion in describing numerous car crashes and other police fire and rescue incidents.

Our road signs don’t indicate east west north and south simply because it leads to confusion especially if you’re going from say the northern most point on the island in Kilauea to the end of the road. While most might think and say you’re traveling “further north” actually you’re moving in more a westerly direction.

One more thing- we’ve noted that, as a matter of fact, the Honolulu newspapers always leave out mention of the four continental directions from their county-press-release- based reports as one did today.


So how ‘bout it Kaua`i folks- how about getting with the program and giving us directions in the terms we’re used to hearing and can use?

We now return you to your regularly scheduled rants.

COME ON IN- THE WATER'S DEADLY

COME ON IN- THE WATER'S DEADLY: It was a close call but, despite the immediate availability of plenty of virtual lighter fluid, our hair did remain flameless yesterday when Kaua`i lifeguards were apparently at the ready, plucking no less than three tourists from the always dangerous waters of Kalihiwai beach, according to a county press release.

You can almost imagine the scene at the usually un-life-guarded beach: jet-ski-riding rescuers at the ready, 50 yards out, as fun-crazed tourists madly dash into the reported 15-20 foot waves. pushing their children ahead of them, only to be plucked out of the water and returned to the beach for yet another go at it, in some sort of insane merry-go-round of potential death.

But perhaps the closest call came on the North Shore of O`ahu where famed "super-model" Heidi Klum rescued her son and his nanny from the raging ocean waves.

Klum's "heroic" act is national news this morning with CNN picking up the Entertainment Tonight story and dramatic photos of the rescue. But what the heck she was doing in the first place- swimming with her seven-year old son at a secluded beach on a day when some North Shore Beaches were closed due to high surf- is anyone's guess.

According to a Hawai`i News Now report

Lifeguards think the incident happened at Papailoa Beach where there was a high surf advisory yesterday with 10-15 foot waves and a strong north wind.

"It was definitely not a day for surfing. It was very ugly and rough and challenging," said Jim Howe, Operations Chief, Ocean Safety & Lifeguard Services.

Papailoa is a remote area on the North Shore near Haleiwa. It has just one public access, limited parking and is a restricted area surrounded by expensive homes. It has potential for big waves breaking close to shore which causes the riptides.

Forget for a moment the "restricted area surrounded by expensive homes" part even though beaches in Hawai`i are not just public property but are supposed to have open access provided, according to the state constitution.

The bigger question is, "where was the Hawai`i Visitors' Bureau" (HVB), which, along with the Kaua'i VB, has come under increasing criticism for what many call a less-than-effective, "not scarey enough" ocean safety campaign... especially of late when 10 drowning on Kaua`i already this year have spawned new efforts like putting an ocean safety video at the baggage claim area on Kaua`i and trying to get the airlines to show it on incoming flights.

But perhaps the biggest disconnect of all came at the end of the article from the same man who had just described the conditions as being "very ugly and rough and challenging."

As for Klum's lifeguard skills, the pros complimented her and may even give her an award for her actions.

"My North Shore lieutenant suggested we give Ms. Klum one of what we call our Merit Awards for rescuing her loved ones. I think we might find a way to send her one. We'll see if she'll accept it or not," said Howe. "I think what we'd like to say to Ms. Klum and her family is congratulations on being such a good mom and so vigilant, and being Johnny on the spot to stop a situation that could have been much worse."

No- no, no, no, no, no- no award... unless it's a "Doofus of the Year Award" for going to, not just a beach without a lifeguard but, one of the most "private" beaches you can find and letting your seven-year-old go out in monster surf, almost getting your kid, his nanny and yourself killed in the process.

To be fair though it isn't as if the warnings that our visitor industry are putting out are effective. And, as anyone who lives in a tourist destination can tell you, tourists tend to forget to pack their common sense... even famous people.

The "new" video made on Kaua`i- one that is supposed to be the model for a proposed state legislative recommendation for placement on all incoming flights- in fact stresses the "Disneyland" vision of "your sun and surf Hawaiian vacation," where jumping off a cliff into raging surf is okay as long as you're careful and know a few underplayed facts placed somewhere toward the end of a "make sure you have fun but liability- both moral and financial- requires us to warn you" message.

The fact that the head of Honolulu lifeguard services thinks this is the time for an award rather than an admonishment is just more proof that those involved in ocean safety are kow-towing to the visitors' industry.

Rather than put out skull-and-crossbones-type warnings they are allowing the HVB to soft-sell the message even contemplating giving out awards for brainlessness instead of using this teaching moment and grabbing the bully pulpit by the horns, driving home the message that this is real life- not Entertainment Tonight.

PEA POD POLITICS FOR PEABRAINS

PEA POD POLITICS FOR PEABRAINS: As many read last week Goofy Mufi Hannemann had his usual blinders on in ignoring an Associated Press article the week before that confirmed what we all knew- that Hawaii Superferry (HSf) Inc.’s claim that they were victims of the courts and those crazy environmentalists was a bogus piece of PR from a company that was actually drowning in red ink created by their own lack of a realistic business plan- although the article missed a chance to dig deeper and find out the ferry was created to fail as part of a military demonstration project for the littoral design.

Mufi’s pledge to bring back the same vessels- even though their size was half the reason for the bankruptcy- demonstrates just how much more damage there is to be done if a Hannemann administration gets it’s hands on the already damaged machinery of the state under the equally mentally and morally challenged Linda Lingle.

And as if to underline some of that damage, in an article about the delays in obtaining an environmental impact statement (EIS) for a UH coral reef research project it was reported that:

Part of the delay is that the state body that could grant UH an exemption to the EIS requirement has not met since Aug. 17 of last year...

The council tried to hold a meeting in late June, but was unable to book adequate state videoconference facilities, Steiner said.

"It seemed like we were moving forward, then it just stalled," she said. "I think that it is not a priority to our state or to our administration to have an active Environmental Council."

Steiner said council members have expressed concern that the group is being penalized possibly for ruling in 2007 that the state Department of Transportation erred when it exempted Superferry harbor improvements from an environmental review. That decision was later supported by a Hawaii Supreme Court ruling that eventually led to the demise of the interisland ferry.

Though the administration pooh-poohed the connection it’s just another symptom of how the state apparatus- especially for environmental protection- is still addled by Lingle’s denial of what even proponents view as the boneheaded way she handed the Superferry EIS and how it continues to hamstring the state EIS process, having created a pissed off Environmental Council and an administration bent on revenge.

Hannemann and Lingle apparently share one thing- a pig-headed battering ram style that scares the heck out of those who have been looking forward to a change of approach in November.