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Kahu Ola · Guardian of Life

Hawaiʻi Hazard Signals

Clear civic hazard signals for wildfire, flood, storm, and air quality across the Hawaiian Islands.
Updated recently
Official Alerts Live Map Resources Guide About How It Works Mission Privacy Support
CHECKING CONDITIONS

Checking conditions…

Loading the current statewide hazard picture from official sources.

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↔ Conditions unchanged since your last visit
⏳ Checking official sources…
NASA FIRMS · NWS · NEXRAD
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Checking…
NASA FIRMS · —
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NWS Official · —
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NWS / RAWS terrain
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Fire Weather
NWS Official
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Rainfall
NEXRAD / MRMS
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Flood Risk
NWS Official
View Live Map Official Alerts
Signal detail ▾
Fire · NASA FIRMS

🔥 Fire Signal — Monitoring

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No satellite wildfire detections in the current statewide snapshot.

NASA FIRMS 📍 Check My Neighborhood
Flood · NWS Official

🌊 Flood Signal — Monitoring

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No active NWS flash flood watches or warnings statewide.

NWS / PacIOOS 📍 Check My Neighborhood
Ocean · NDBC / NWS / PacIOOS

🌊 Surf & Ocean Safety

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Surf by shore

Today's surf zone forecast

NDBC · NWS · PacIOOS · NHC/CPHC — NWS Honolulu →
Kūpuna & Keiki Safety Checking current conditions. Kūpuna, keiki, and those in low-lying areas should follow National Weather Service and county guidance.
Kahu Ola provides public hazard situational awareness using trusted scientific and government data sources.
LOCAL BRIEF — MAUI

Find your area for a local brief

Find your area

Kahu Ola shows conditions for your specific neighborhood. Your location never leaves this device — only your zone name is used.

Personalize your brief (optional)

Saved on this device only. Never transmitted.

Hawaiʻi Hazard Snapshot

Live snapshot temporarily unavailable — see the Live Map

Situational awareness only — follow official guidance. Open Live Map →

System Transparency

Kahu Ola integrates public data from trusted scientific and government sources.

NASA FIRMS NOAA NWS EPA AirNow USGS PacIOOS
Kahu Ola provides public hazard situational awareness. It is not an official emergency service. If a data source is degraded or stale, it will be clearly labeled.

How It Works

Satellite data to plain language
— in under 15 minutes

Kahu Ola connects six government data systems and normalizes them into three human-readable signal types. No jargon. No raw feeds. Just clear, honest hazard status.

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Government sensors detect

NASA FIRMS satellites pass over Hawaiʻi a few times a day, and detections typically reach Kahu Ola 20–30+ minutes after each pass. NOAA radar scans continuously. NWS meteorologists issue watches and warnings.

NASA · NOAA · NWS · EPA · USGS · NIFC
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Aggregator normalizes

The Kahu Ola Aggregator ingests, validates, and caches every signal server-side. Raw government data becomes clean, versioned FireSignal · SmokeSignal · Perimeter. Keys never reach the client.

Via /api/hazards/* · keys server-side only
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You see plain language

The app displays honest, timestamped signals with clear freshness labels. Stale data is always marked. Estimated perimeters are never labeled official. Your location never leaves your device.

Zero PII · Edge geofencing · Fail-soft rendering

Our Mission

Built after Lahaina.
Built for everyone.

The 2023 Lahaina wildfire revealed a devastating gap: advanced satellites were tracking the fire in real-time while residents had no clear, accessible signal. Life-saving data existed — it just wasn't reaching people in plain language.

Kahu Ola was built to close that gap. Not to replace official emergency services — but to give every resident of Hawaiʻi access to the same data that emergency managers use, translated into calm, understandable language before, during, and after a hazard.

🔥 Wildfire-First 🔒 Privacy-First ⚡ Failure-Tolerant 🏛 Grant-Ready

Engineered for resilience

Cache-first architecture with validated data snapshots. The app renders under 8 distinct failure conditions — including full network loss. A degraded signal is infinitely safer than a blank screen.

Privacy as a design principle

Safety should not require surveillance. Proximity awareness is computed on-device. No location history is built, stored, or transmitted — ever. No accounts. No ads. No data selling.

Honest about uncertainty

Every signal shows its source and age. Estimated fire perimeters are never labeled official. Stale data is always marked. Kahu Ola never fabricates or inflates hazard severity.

Community-driven · Free public service

An independent civic technology initiative — not a government agency, not a commercial product. Built to remain freely accessible to every resident of Hawaiʻi.

Privacy-First Architecture

Zero PII. Zero tracking.

We do not need to know who you are to help you stay safe. Kahu Ola is designed around a single rule: your data stays on your device.

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No accounts required

Core safety views are accessible without sign-in. No email. No phone number. No profile.

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On-device proximity

Hazard distance checks compute locally on your device. Your GPS coordinates never cross the device boundary.

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No data selling · No ads

No advertising profiles. No behavioral tracking. No brokered personal data. The platform is ad-free by design.

Full detail for reviewers and auditors: Privacy Policy.

Data Infrastructure

16 open government sources.
One civic layer.

Every data source is public, open, and verifiable. Kahu Ola never creates its own hazard data — it normalizes, timestamps, and presents what government agencies already publish.

FireNASA FIRMSVIIRS + MODIS satellite detections
FireNOAA HMSSmoke polygon detection
FireNIFC WFIGSOfficial fire perimeters
WeatherNWS AlertsFlash flood, tsunami, fire weather
WeatherNOAA NEXRADLive radar reflectivity (QPE)
WeatherIowa State MesonetNEXRAD station observations
AirEPA AirNowAir quality index tiles
OceanPacIOOSCoastal + ocean sensors
StormNHC CurrentStormsPacific hurricane tracks
StormNWS TWCTsunami Warning Center alerts
TerrainSMART Hawaiʻi12 island terrain + runoff cells
MapsMapTilerBase map rendering
SatelliteNOAA GOES-WestInfrared / WMS tiles
HazardNWS LSR / IEMLocal storm reports (HFO)
FireRAWS MesoWestWind + fuel moisture stations
RadarMesonet ProxyPHMO · PHKM · PHWA · PHKI
All upstream calls are proxied server-side through the Kahu Ola Cloudflare Worker. The browser never contacts government APIs directly — a core architectural invariant that protects API keys and ensures rate-limit safety.

Get Started

Available now on web
and iPhone.

Open Kahu Ola in any browser, or download the iOS app for native alerts and offline-first hazard awareness.

Web · Available Now

Kahu Ola Live Map

Satellite wildfire detections (typically 20–30 minutes after each satellite pass), flash flood alerts, tsunami status, hurricane tracks, and rain radar — all in one civic dashboard. Works on any device, any browser.

  • NASA FIRMS fire hotspots
  • NWS official flood + tsunami alerts
  • Live NEXRAD rain radar
  • Fire weather + wind context
  • FRESH / STALE data transparency
Open Live Map →
iOS · Available Now

Kahu Ola iOS App

The Kahu Ola iOS app brings the full hazard intelligence dashboard to iPhone with native notifications for critical alerts and offline-first resilience.

  • Push alerts for active warnings
  • On-device proximity geofencing
  • Offline-first — works without signal
  • Zero PII · No account required
Download on the App Store →

Available on the App Store for iPhone.

Kahu Ola provides situational awareness and does not replace official emergency directives. Always follow guidance from HIEMA, county emergency management, and the National Weather Service Honolulu.