INTRODUCTION
Hawaii is unlike any other state in this series, for two reasons that change everything about how an emergency unfolds for your person.
The first is geography. Hawaii is a chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific. When a hurricane, tsunami, or wildfire threatens a facility on the mainland, the answer is usually to drive people inland to another prison. In Hawaii there often is no inland to go to, and moving people off an island means aircraft or barges, not buses. Each island has its own state jail, and the choice in a disaster is usually to shelter in place and ride it out, because the alternative is logistically enormous. The exception is the one facility that sits in a tsunami zone, and we will come back to it, because it is the only Hawaii jail that has actually been fully evacuated for a natural disaster.
The second reason is that a large share of Hawaii's prisoners are not in Hawaii at all. For years the state has shipped a big part of its male prison population, recently somewhere around 800 to roughly 1,400 men depending on the year, to a private prison in the Arizona desert called Saguaro, run by CoreCivic. That is close to a quarter of the male population, held an ocean away. If your person is one of them, your disaster planning is not really about Hawaii's hazards at all; it is about Arizona's, and about the distance. We cover both situations in this guide.
Hawaii runs everything through one state agency, now called the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which was split off from the old Department of Public Safety at the start of 2024. The state runs the prisons and the jails; the counties do not run jails here. That makes the chain of responsibility simple. What is not simple is the geography, the distance, and the sheer number of different hazards a Hawaii family has to think about.
PART 1: HAWAII DCR DISASTER PROCEDURES
The Hawaii Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation does not publish a detailed public emergency or evacuation plan, which is normal for corrections agencies that cite security. What shapes Hawaii's approach more than any written plan is the island reality. The state's disaster response runs through the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency and the county emergency management and civil defense agencies on each island, and the DCR coordinates with them rather than acting alone. When the Kauai jail had to evacuate during a tsunami warning, it took the jail, the county emergency management agency, and the police working together to do it.
Hawaii faces more kinds of natural hazard than almost anywhere: hurricanes, tsunamis, flash floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and the vog they produce, and a wildfire risk that the 2023 Maui fires proved is far more deadly than officials once assumed. The honest default for most facilities is to shelter in place. The buildings are concrete and steel, and with no inland sister prison to absorb a thousand people on short notice, riding out the storm inside is usually the plan unless the facility itself is in a flood or tsunami zone.
The facilities are spread across the islands. Most of the prison beds are on Oahu: the Halawa Correctional Facility near Aiea is the state's largest prison and its only medium security one, alongside the Waiawa Correctional Facility and the Women's Community Correctional Center. The island of Hawaii has the Kulani Correctional Facility and, in Hilo, the Hawaii Community Correctional Center. Each main island also has a Community Correctional Center that serves as its jail, which we cover in the next section. Because everything is islanded, an emergency that hits one island does not let the state lean on another the way a mainland state shifts people county to county.
On communication, Hawaii routes inmate phone calls and tablet services through GTL, now operating as ViaPath, and families fund accounts and send deposits through that network. As anywhere, a storm that takes out power and phone lines takes out the calls, even when the building is fine. Expect calls to stop or become unreliable in the hours and days after a major event, visitation to be suspended, and service to return in stages. There is no published timeline, because it depends on how hard that island's grid was hit, and an island grid can take a while to come back. To locate a person and track custody status, Hawaii points families to the national VINE notification network, and the DCR is the central agency for any in-state facility.
The DCR does not publish how commissary balances or personal property are handled during an emergency. In a single state system, balances generally follow the person within the DCR's records, but this is not promised, and property is always the bigger risk in any fast move. Court dates can slip during a major disaster, while a scheduled release remains a legal deadline the department still has to meet.
The Arizona question. If your person is at Saguaro in Eloy, Arizona, none of Hawaii's hazards apply to them; the Arizona desert's do, chiefly extreme heat, and the facility is managed for the state through the DCR's mainland branch. Saguaro is run by CoreCivic and holds a large share of Hawaii's sentenced men. For families, the hard part is ordinary distance: a visit means a trans-Pacific flight, and staying in touch runs through the mainland branch and the facility's own systems rather than a local jail you can drive to. There is an active push in the Hawaii Legislature to bring these men back to the islands over the coming years, but for now a quarter of the male population remains in Arizona, and a family with someone there should know to deal with the DCR mainland branch and the Arizona facility, not their home island jail.
PART 2: COUNTY JAILS, WHICH HAWAII DOES NOT HAVE
Like the unified states earlier in this series, Hawaii has no county jails. The four counties, Honolulu, Hawaii, Maui, and Kauai, do not run their own lockups. Instead the state DCR operates a Community Correctional Center on each main island that serves as that island's jail, holding people awaiting trial and those serving shorter sentences right alongside the prison function.
That means one Community Correctional Center per island: the Oahu Community Correctional Center in Honolulu, which is the largest and most crowded jail in the state and has long been slated for replacement; the Maui Community Correctional Center in Wailuku; the Hawaii Community Correctional Center in Hilo; and the Kauai Community Correctional Center in Wailua. When a person is arrested and cannot post bail, they go into the state Community Correctional Center for their island, not a county facility.
For a family, this removes the county versus state confusion that families on the mainland struggle with. There is one agency, one system, one place to look. The flip side is the island isolation. If your island's jail is in trouble during a disaster, there is no neighboring county jail to absorb the overflow and no quick way to move people to another island. The Kauai jail is the clearest warning here. It was built in the 1970s for a dozen inmates, now holds well over a hundred, sits inside a tsunami evacuation zone, and floods in heavy rain, with a past flood destroying vehicles and damaging generators. It is the only state jail that has been fully evacuated for a natural disaster, during a tsunami warning, and the state is now working to build its replacement on higher ground out of the tsunami zone. If your person is at a Community Correctional Center, learn where that specific facility sits relative to the water and the flood maps, because on an island that geography is the whole story.
PART 3: FEDERAL PRISON IN HAWAII, FDC HONOLULU
There is one federal facility in Hawaii, the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu, on Elliott Street next to the Honolulu airport. It is run by the federal Bureau of Prisons, so none of the state DCR procedures apply to it. FDC Honolulu holds men and women of all security levels, mostly people awaiting trial or sentencing or serving short sentences, and it also holds some state inmates as overflow when the state system is full.
Its location matters for a disaster: sitting in the low, flat airport area near the coast, it is in the kind of zone exposed to coastal flooding and tsunami surge. The BOP runs its own national emergency framework and does not publish detailed facility plans. Federal family notification runs through the BOP inmate locator and the facility, and inmate calls run through the federal phone system rather than the state's. The biggest difference from the state side is reach: the BOP can transfer people between federal facilities across the ocean to the mainland, so a federal emergency could move your person thousands of miles, and during a transfer communication is limited and families often do not learn of a move until after it happens. If your person is federal, use the BOP locator and understand that the state's systems will not track them.
PART 4: WHAT FAMILIES SHOULD DO
Before anything happens. First, pin down exactly where your person is, because in Hawaii that can mean a jail on your island, a prison on Oahu, a private prison in Arizona, or the federal center in Honolulu, and each one is a different playbook. Write down their full name and ID number, and for a federal person their BOP register number. If your person is at Saguaro in Arizona, find and save the DCR mainland branch contact and the facility's information now, because that, not your home island jail, is who you will deal with. Set up and fund the GTL/ViaPath phone account, or the federal phone account, before hurricane season and before any known threat, because account problems are nearly impossible to fix once an island loses power. Learn how to look your person up now. Know which hazard zone the facility sits in: for a coastal or low lying facility, know the tsunami and flood maps for that spot.
During and right after. Try your normal channels first. If they fail, do not call the facility directly; in a disaster the lines will be overloaded and you may tie up a line that is needed. Follow the island's emergency management and civil defense channels and the DCR's updates and social media, because on a small island official local information moves fast. Do not try to drive to the facility during a tsunami warning, hurricane, or fire; the roads may be evacuation routes or closed, and the facility will be locked down. Look your person up once systems are back, and be patient, because island communications can take time to restore.
In the days after. Once you reach your person, confirm three things: where they are, that they are alright, and the status of their property, commissary, and phone account. Write down anything missing or damaged, with dates. Expect communication to return in stages, with phones often coming back before visitation, and expect that a power outage on an island can stretch longer than on the mainland.
Longer term. Follow up on any property that did not come back. If notification failed or the breakdown was severe, you can raise it with the DCR, or with the BOP for a federal person. For a family with someone in Arizona, keep your contact information current with the mainland branch, since that is your lifeline across the distance.
PART 5: HISTORICAL CONTEXT, WHAT HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED
Hawaii's record shows a state that lives with many hazards at once, and a corrections system whose hardest problem is geography.
Hurricane Iniki, September 1992. Iniki struck Kauai head on and remains the most destructive hurricane in modern Hawaii history, flattening much of the island. Its mark on the corrections system is still physically visible: the temporary cabins added to the Kauai Community Correctional Center after Iniki are still in use decades later, a reminder of how a single storm on a small island can shape a facility for a generation.
The Kauai jail tsunami evacuation. The Kauai Community Correctional Center in Wailua sits inside a tsunami evacuation zone and floods in heavy rain. During a tsunami warning, the jail had to fully evacuate its inmates and staff, coordinated among the jail, the Kauai Emergency Management Agency, and the police. The facility's own warden has called it a disaster waiting to happen every time there is a tsunami warning or a heavy rain, and it is the only state jail on record as having been fully evacuated for a natural disaster. The state is now building a replacement on higher ground, out of the tsunami zone, which is the clearest sign of how seriously that exposure is taken.
The 2023 Maui wildfires. On August 8, 2023, wind driven wildfire destroyed the town of Lahaina on West Maui in one of the deadliest American wildfires in over a century, while other fires burned in the island's central valley and upcountry. The Maui Community Correctional Center sits in Wailuku in central Maui, away from the Lahaina burn area, and there is no public record of the jail being evacuated. But the fires permanently changed how Hawaii thinks about wildfire risk, a hazard the state had previously rated as low to human life, and any honest disaster guide for the islands now has to treat fire as a first order threat alongside water and wind.
The Kilauea volcano. The 2018 Kilauea eruption on the island of Hawaii destroyed entire neighborhoods in the lower Puna district. The correctional facilities on that island were not in the lava's path and there is no public record of an eruption evacuation, but the volcano is a constant presence, and the vog, the volcanic haze it produces, is an ongoing air quality concern across the island. It is a reminder that Hawaii's hazard list includes threats most states never have to plan for.
Tsunami warnings. Hawaii sits in the path of Pacific tsunamis generated by distant earthquakes, and the state has been placed under tsunami watches and warnings repeatedly in recent years after major quakes around the Pacific rim. For coastal and low lying facilities, a tsunami warning is the scenario that can force the one thing island geography makes hardest, a real evacuation, which is exactly why the location of your person's facility relative to the water matters so much here.
CLOSING
Most years, your person in Hawaii will be fine, and the odds of a true disaster striking their specific facility are low. But Hawaii stacks the deck in a way no other state does: a chain of islands with nowhere inland to run, a longer list of hazards than anywhere else, and a quarter of the male prison population held an ocean away in the Arizona desert. So the work to do now is mostly about knowing exactly where your person is and which playbook applies. Pin down the facility. Learn its hazard zone. Fund the phone account before the season. Keep your contact information current, especially with the mainland branch if your person is in Arizona. Then, if the rare bad day comes, you will know precisely who to call and what to expect, instead of guessing across an ocean.