(BIVN) – The State of Hawaiʻi is promoting a media campaign, urging residents to be “two weeks ready” as the 2023 hurricane season gets underway.

The Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu says no tropical cyclones are expected during the next 7 days. Last month, forecasters said there is a 50% chance of above-normal tropical cyclone activity during the central Pacific hurricane season this year, as the El Niño warming pattern was expected to develop in the Pacific Ocean. Earlier this month, the NOAA National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño Advisory, saying the climate phenomenon was expected to be moderate-to-strong by late fall and/or early winter.

From the Hawai‘i Emergency Management Agency:

As hurricane season begins, the Hawai‘i Emergency Management Agency (HI-EMA) is launching a new public service campaign to urge residents to take the first step to build up emergency supplies.

A recent HI-EMA survey indicated that most of Hawai‘i residents believe that they would be prepared if a disaster struck the state soon. But the rest were unsure, with residents of the City and County of Honolulu less confident about being prepared than residents of other islands.

The most common reasons cited for why residents were unsure were:

• They didn’t have enough supplies
• They couldn’t afford to prepare, or
• They didn’t know what to do to be prepared.

That’s why the new public service announcement (PSA) campaign focuses on taking the first step toward building up a “2 Weeks Ready” stockpile of emergency supplies.

“We know that setting aside two weeks of food, water, medicine, and other emergency items can be a heavy lift here in Hawai‘i, so our new campaign focuses on taking that first step, even if it’s just by setting aside a couple of days’ worth of supplies,” said HI-EMA Administrator James Barros.

By planning to pick up one or two extra items during a sale, residents can gradually build up their emergency supplies over time. If storage space is scarce, focus on items that you would normally buy anyway to maximize shelf space, and look at options such as collapsible water jugs that can be filled when a hurricane is still approaching.

“We’d love to see everyone in Hawai‘i ‘2 Weeks Ready’ today, but having even a few days of supplies is better than nothing,” Barros said. “When more people are prepared for a hurricane or other major disaster, it allows our first responders to concentrate their efforts where the need for help is greatest, so it helps the whole community.”

The first PSA focuses on a family who thought being ‘2 Weeks Ready’ was too hard, but decide to add canned goods, pet food, peanut butter and other items to their shopping list to take the first step toward preparedness. The narrator advises “Don’t wait until it’s too late” and adds the tagline from last year’s HI-EMA video campaign: “Don’t get scared; get prepared.”

As with the PSA campaigns HI-EMA launched in 2021 for tsunami awareness and in 2022 for hurricane readiness, the new campaign is animated and features subtitles in non-English languages that are commonly spoken in Hawai‘i. Versions of the ad were recorded in both English and Hawaiian, with subtitles in English, Hawaiian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, Ilocano and Japanese.

The PSA campaign was funded through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program. The grant covered production and advertising purchases on local television and radio outlets and digital media platforms.

For Hawai‘i-based viewers who have a preferred language other than English on a digital platform, the service will deliver a PSA with subtitles in their preferred language if available. The initial PSA will be posted June 19 to the HI-EMA YouTube channel, and a second PSA in the series will debut in August. The subtitled versions also will be posted under the matching languages on the “Language Resource Hub” page, on the HI-EMA website at ready.hawaii.gov.