LAHAINA – A West Maui Community Disaster Planning Meeting is scheduled for Thursday, July 20, in the Lahaina Civic Center Amphitheater at 5:30 p.m. These meetings are free and open to the public.

With hurricane season officially underway, the Hawaiian Hazards Awareness and Resilience Program (HHARP) invites the public to hear from Maui Electric Co. representatives Chris Reynolds and Kuhea Asiu, who will discuss important storm response and power restoration efforts.

“It’s our responsibility to provide safe and reliable power to our community, but natural disasters do happen and outages can occur, so being prepared is critical,” said Chris Reynolds, manager of system operations at Maui Electric.

“That’s why we’ll be discussing how residents and businesses can make plans now to safeguard themselves and their families during this potentially active storm season. We’ll also be sharing how our trained crews respond to emergencies and the steps we take to restore power should a natural disaster strike.”

Maui Electric provides electrical service to nearly 70,000 customers on Maui, Molokai and Lanai. Reynolds oversees the company’s system operations area that monitors and controls the company’s electrical system at all times, as well as reroutes power and relays outage information and restoration crews during outages.

Asiu coordinates the company’s community and government relations efforts for Maui County.

The West Maui Taxpayers Association is working with the Maui Emergency Management Agency, The Pacific Disaster Center and the State Emergency Management Agency on developing a customized disaster plan designed to meet West Maui’s specific needs.

Isolation from the island’s major hospital and airport due to frequent road closures, fires and flooding have highlighted the need for special preparedness planning.

HHARP is a series of monthly workshops presented by subject matter experts to provide education for hazard understanding and offer tools and information resources to guide community mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery planning.

For more information about HHARP and this event, contact Joseph Pluta at 661-7990 or pluta@maui.net.

For more information on Maui Electric emergency response presentations, contact Asiu at 872-3244 or kuhea.asiu@mauielectric.com.