Hawaii’s state Department of Land and Natural Resources plans to revive the Beach and Water Safety Task Force, a body charged with placing warning signs at dangerous beaches that has not convened since 2012, according to reporting by Honolulu Civil Beat distributed through the Associated Press. The announcement follows a decade in which about 800 people drowned in the waters off Hawaii’s roughly 1,000-mile coastline.

The task force revival follows a Civil Beat investigation into Hawaii’s ocean safety record and advocacy from the Hawaiian Lifeguard Association. Hawaii has the second-highest rate of residential drownings in the country, according to Civil Beat, yet the state has not called for a single new beach warning sign in more than 13 years.

“It’s a huge win,” said Kirsten Hermstad, executive director of the Hawaiian Lifeguard Association, which pushed for the reinstatement. “They’re listening, they think it’s important too, and they’re letting us do our work. And that’s huge.”

Since 1996, DLNR has been required by law to hang warning signs at state and county beach parks to inform the public about hazards including rip currents and dangerous shorebreaks. The Beach and Water Safety Task Force was created to evaluate risks at individual beaches and determine where signs were needed.

The task force stopped meeting in 2012, according to reports submitted to the state Legislature. In the years since, DLNR placed about 150 signs at seven official state beach parks covering roughly 3,000 acres — not including Maui. That figure breaks down to 28 signs at state beaches on Oahu, about 26 on the Big Island, and 95 on Kauai, according to Alan Carpenter, acting administrator for the division overseeing state parks at DLNR.

DLNR supported legislation to dissolve the task force entirely in 2021 and again in 2024, arguing that placing warning signs had become standard practice and the group’s core work was complete.

Rep. David Tarnas, who opposed those dissolution efforts, said the long lapse without meetings was preventable.

“I think it was a lost opportunity,” Tarnas said.

Carpenter offered a different framing of the department’s priorities.

“I’m far more interested in keeping people safe than I am about liability. Signs protect against liability. That’s great, but who cares?” Carpenter said. “We don’t want people dying in our waters or in our streams. That’s the most important thing.”

Families Point to Specific Failures

For families who have experienced fatal ocean accidents in Hawaii, the task force revival is welcome but belated.

Rachel Able’s daughter Lily died in 2022 following a surfing accident at a popular Big Island beach that had no warning signs. A new road had made the beach more accessible around the time the task force stopped meeting, Able said. She learned of the task force’s reinstatement just days before what would have been Lily’s 19th birthday.

“Why does it take the public coming out and speaking up for these things after tragedies happen for these things to be reevaluated?” Able said.

Jessamy Town Hornor, a co-founder of the Hawaii Water Safety Coalition, lost her 6-year-old daughter Mina and husband Mark when a rogue wave swept them out to sea at Makapuu Tide Pools on the east side of Oahu in 2016. She said static warning signs cannot adequately communicate how quickly ocean conditions can change.

“Just as a static sign, it simply does not adequately convey the variability of that location that it could look perfectly safe to swim in and become a death trap, really, in an instant,” Hornor said.

Hornor and Tarnas said newer technology holds promise — geofencing alerts sent to mobile phones when beachgoers enter a hazardous area, and QR codes on signs linking to real-time conditions.

Proposed Changes to Operation and Scope

Carpenter said he wants counties, which operate the vast majority of Hawaii’s beach parks, to take the lead in managing warnings rather than leaving the responsibility with the state. The Hawaiian Lifeguard Association has volunteered to take over operation of the task force itself, Hermstad said.

Tarnas said he and Carpenter are also weighing whether the law governing the task force needs updating. The current statute requires warnings only at state and county beach parks, leaving no legal duty to post signs at many popular remote beaches, tourist attractions, and rocky coastline spots frequented by fishermen — locations that social media increasingly draws visitors to.

“I would look to this Task Force on Beach and Water Safety to come back to us and say, ‘Things have changed. We need to modify the statute in order to encompass all of these other places which are now destinations that are not formal state beach parks or county beach parks,’” Tarnas said.

Legislative changes remain a future goal. Hermstad said her immediate priority is getting the task force meeting again.

Broader Safety Context

The task force revival comes as Hawaii has expanded other ocean safety efforts. The Hawaii Water Safety Coalition released the state’s first Water Safety Plan last year. On Oahu, lifeguards now constitute their own county government agency. The Department of Health has increased investment and staffing for drowning prevention, and the state and nonprofits are funding more swimming lessons.

That last measure addresses a significant gap: about half of Hawaii’s children do not know how to swim, according to Civil Beat, even though drowning is the leading cause of death for children under 15 in the state.

Hornor said reinstating the task force is a necessary step but cannot be the endpoint.

“We need to do more on the prevention side,” Hornor said. “That truly should be the mission of this effort.”