Just weeks after Hurricane Lane had given the Hawaiian islands quite a scare, another storm, Olivia, brewed up in the Pacific.

With 40-50 mph wind gusts and over 10 inches of rain, it seems like something Oahu would take seriously.

High School students in Honolulu thought otherwise.

Victor Wong, a Freshman at Kalani High School, explains that he doesn’t give much thought to disaster warnings as they tend to end up being exaggerated.

“Nothing ever happens to us,” Victor Wong (9) says.

Other students agreed. 

“Every time I take it less and less seriously,” Punahou student Sora Chu said.

In 2017 when Florida was preparing for hurricane Irma, which ended up being catastrophic, many residents were going through the same thing, named “storm fatigue” by many journalists.

“If people don’t take this threat seriously, people are going to die,” Jacksonville Beach Mayor Charlie Latham warned at the time.

Indeed, many people were killed in Florida during hurricane Irma; Hawaii could suffer a similar fate.

Asia Yeary, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employee, explains that as an island we are particularly vulnerable to hurricanes. It takes longer to ship in supplies and the ports and airports could be damaged. This would cause the recovery to be “prolonged.”

“If a hurricane really were to hit Oahu it would be no joke,” Yeary says. “We’ve been very lucky but that won’t always be the case.”