Nothing funny here, well maybe a bit. This is the case at the disaster rehearsal at our own local Kona Community Hospital and Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole. Everyone was there, Homeland Security, Civil Defense, Fire department, Police department, Air ambulances, our finest local EMTs and our own Air National Guard. As well as 100’s of volunteers sharing their Kōkua (help). We felt safe and lucky to have them practicing on The Big Island of Hawaii.
The gig was to document the action and tell the story. We soon realized as photographers that we were witnessing gut-busting humor, as the bodies were manually filled with air and then loaded and unloaded from trucks to their assigned locations & injuries.
The big lesson for me was the sun, it was hot hot hot even at the cool Mauka (mountain) elevations. But the airport runway, oh boy that was ikaika (intense) heat, Imu (underground oven) hot. All the support teams will be outside the hospital tents which will make it very difficult for the support teams backing up the Hospital staff in the new A/C cooled tents.
We gonna need a bigger tent.
Kōkua Hump Day.
