Firecrackers ruin it for all
Our town is blessed with people who have enough resources to launch colorful bombs over our neighborhoods. If the spine-jarring noise isn’t enough to frost your cookies, the hot pellets raining down on our dry brush must put a smile on every firefighter in town.
I spoke with an officer who tried to find these rascals on Christmas Eve, but what he was faced with was a now quiet area.
If you enjoy this total disregard for your neighbors and relish that every living thing around you is traumatized, then it’s just business as usual. And I’ll put my tongue in my cheek and say thanks for the war zone experience. I can’t wait for New Year’s Eve!
Steve Snyder
Kalaoa
Following up with correction
Just to avoid contributing to the “fake news phenomena” – I was wrong about the storm fatality. The woman killed in the wind storm was a camper. Not, as I wrote, homeless.
Ah, the trials of being published.
I read the WHT everyday online and hard copy when in Kona. I admire your local coverage and find your national coverage seems to encapsulate the US mood and focus of attention.
Mahalo nui.
Mark Proctor
British Columbia, Canada
What a guy
I’m still shaking my head at the news that President (I use the term hesitantly) Trump could tell a 7-year-old that her belief in Santa is marginal. Really?
Merry Christmas, Donnie.
Robert Nathan
Waikoloa
Verify first, verify always
Something’s been bothering me for almost a year.
Why was it that so many people who were allegedly dumbfounded, or otherwise reacting to the false cellphone missile warning alert, failed to verify the actual warning?
The State of Hawaii has in place (and tested on a regular schedule!) an audible warning system to be activated in the event of earthquakes, tsunamis, and other emergencies. I was at an outdoor market on that Saturday morning when we were notified of an incoming missile, but the aforementioned warning system failed to activate.
What could it be, a malfunction of the siren, or an error on the part of the cellphone? But the siren worked when tested the month prior, and the month prior, and the month prior, etc. I did not hear the siren sound, and I was no more than 100 feet away from it. Perhaps, just perhaps, the alert warning was nothing more than an error. If it was sent in error and without bothering to listen to the warning siren, I would just continue doing what I was doing — nothing. But if it was a real alert I’d still be doing nothing that fateful Saturday morning.
So next time you receive an alert on your cellphone, smart phone or whatever, and it will happen again, verify it some other way. Better yet, don’t have your phone accept alerts. And don’t think our government is always right!
Michael Last
Naalehu