As Hawai'i emergency officials re-examine their response to Sunday's earthquakes and blackout amid criticism about information delays, experts elsewhere say it's important to remember that each situation is different.

Officials in earthquake-prone California say the emergency communication system there is designed to quickly cut into commercial radio and television broadcasts if necessary, but that such action would depend on the nature of the emergency.

California's Emergency Alert System is designed primarily to warn people of a specific impending threat, and would not necessarily be activated after a quake, said Eric Lamoureux, chief of public information for the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services.

"Generally, with earthquakes, you have no warning, and so EAS is not necessarily the best tool to get information out to the public, because they will largely have already reacted to the event," he said. "EAS isn't intended, at least in California, to be a tool to just get general public information out after the fact."

The system could be activated after a quake to instruct people to evacuate a certain area that became dangerous as a result of a quake, however, he said. The state can activate the system in a major catastrophe, but discretion is left to cities and counties when there are local or regional emergencies, Lamoureux said.

POST-QUAKE MESSAGE

Hawai'i's state Civil Defense agency activated a similar EAS nearly two hours after the first and strongest quake struck at 7:07 a.m. Sunday. But information had already been trickling in by telephone from other sources to the few radio stations that were able to continue operating with backup power supplies.

Power was cut off to much of the state, but damage was mainly confined to the Big Island.

The Civil Defense message described the first quake's epicenter and magnitude, clarified that it had not generated a tsunami, and warned people to stay off roads because traffic signals weren't working.

O'ahu's county Civil Defense agency had tried to send out a similar message nearly one hour after the quake through the older Emergency Broadcast System, spokesman John Cummings said.

But the information was not broadcast because radio stations that had not been knocked off the air by the blackout did not activate a switch that would allow the message to come through, he said.

The county can trigger EAS messages that break into broadcasts, but they are generally pre-recorded and warn of impending problems, Cummings said.

GIVING INFORMATION

Officials in Los Angeles and San Francisco said that if a quake were serious enough, the EAS system would likely be activated quickly to tell citizens what had happened and what to expect.

"We would get that information out, hopefully within minutes, to the public," said Chris Ipsen, operations chief for the Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Department.

"You want to get something out as quickly as you can to let people know that the authorities are OK and are handling this, and to try and cut down on the panic," he said. "As we got more reliable, verified information, we would be doing regular broadcasts."

San Francisco's Office of Emergency Services and Homeland Security would activate its EAS system if an earthquake was serious enough, said office spokeswoman Laura Adleman.

"We would certainly want to get that out as soon as possible, at least an initial basic message, particularly if there were some instruction we wanted to give people." she said. "But that may or may not be something we would know in seconds."

On Tuesday — the 17th anniversary of the Loma Prieta quake that rocked San Francisco in 1989 — the city unveiled a text message system that will send emergency information to private cell phones, pagers and other personal communication devices.

The AlertSF system is meant to provide reliable information when other communications systems fail, and can send text messages in English and Spanish, targeted to specific neighborhoods. The system can tell users the location of the nearest emergency shelter in their ZIP code, for example, Adleman said.

Anyone can subscribe to the system for free, but regular charges from service providers may apply, she said.

A NEW COMMITTEE

Following Sunday's quakes, Gov. Linda Lingle created a committee of government officials and broadcast industry leaders to consider ways to improve the flow of information in emergencies.

Her opponent in the Nov. 7 election, Randall Iwase, has dismissed the committee as a public relations ploy meant to obscure communication and leadership failures. But Lingle said it is important to hear from industry leaders who may need to invest in staffing, back-up power, or other equipment.

Reach Johnny Brannon at jbrannon@honoluluadvertiser.com.