Never A Disaster That Our Leaders Can’t Make Worse

I’m sure you already know about the big earthquake that shook Hawaii this morning. No fatalities (lucky that) but the state’s in miserable condition, with widespread power outages and major roads destroyed, or blocked by landslides.

Quite the popular tourist spot, Hawaii. There must be thousands of visitors there this second who’d love nothing more than to cut their vacations short and go home right now. The tourists have it especially rough because they are, of course, far less likely than locals to have any sort of emergency supplies on hand:

In Waikiki, one of the state's primary tourism areas, worried visitors began lining up outside convenience stores to purchase food, water and other supplies. Managers were letting tourists into the darkened stores one at a time.

Karie and Bryan Croes waited an hour to buy bottles of water, chips and bread. "It's quite a honeymoon story," said Karie as she and her husband sat in lounge chairs surrounded by their grocery bags beside a pool at ResortQuest Waikiki Beach Hotel.

Yes, tourists and Hawaiians both would all be better off if the visitors could get out of there until the emergency’s over. But the tourists aren’t allowed to leave just yet:

Airports were functioning despite the power outages, though travel was difficult and some flights were being canceled, officials said. Rod Haraga, director of the state Transportation Department, told KSSK said that inbound flights were being allowed to land, but outgoing flights were not taking off because the TSA doesn't have enough power to screen passengers.

Got that? The runways and planes are all just fine but people are stuck on an island thousands of miles away from the nearest major landmass because TSA doesn’t have enough electricity to determine whether or not the bottle of shampoo in a passenger’s carry-on bag is big enough to exceed the anti-terrorist safety size limit.

Or perhaps I should rephrase that: though TSA knows it simply must have electricity to play its extremely vital role in keeping America safe, none of the organization’s wise and brilliant leaders, like Kip Hawley, ever once thought “since terrorist attacks and natural disasters are both wont to cause power failures maybe we should have a few goddamned generators lying around in case there’s an emergency.”