Emergency Shelters in Hawaiʻi

Every county announces shelter and refuge openings through its own channels, and none of them publish a statewide live roster. This page points at the official source for each island and explains what you are actually being offered.

A refuge area is a last resort, not a first choice. Your own home, a friend or family member's home, or even your workplace may be safer than a public hurricane refuge area, because those are ordinary buildings that were never built or retrofitted to a storm shelter standard. Pick two places outside your evacuation zone now, and go to a public site only if you have no safer option. This is the county's own guidance, and it is the most useful thing on this page.

Confirm before you travel

Shelter status changes hour to hour during an event. A site listed today may be full, closed or never opened at all by the time you arrive, and the lists published by counties can lag the real situation by many hours. During the response to Tropical Storm Lala, one county's own shelter layer went 28 hours without an update while the event was still active.

So treat every list, including the ones linked below, as a report with a timestamp rather than a live reading. Call the county before you leave, and never travel to a site during dangerous conditions on the strength of a web page.

Not all shelters take pets

Pet policy varies by site and by event, and accessibility provisions do too. If you have animals, or anyone in your household has mobility, medical or accessibility needs, confirm those specifics with the county before an event rather than at the door.

Official sources by county

Oʻahu, Honolulu County

Honolulu Department of Emergency Management: 808-723-8960.

Hawaiʻi Island, Hawaiʻi County

Civil Defense: 808-935-0031. Hawaiʻi County is the only county in the state that publishes a live, staff-edited shelter layer, which the live map reads and shows as listed open with the time it was last edited, never as open.

Maui County: Maui, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi

Kauaʻi County

Statewide

Before you need one

The single most useful thing you can do is find out whether you are in an evacuation zone, on a day when nothing is happening. Zones are known well in advance. Once you know yours, pick two places outside it where you could go, and you may never need a public site at all.

HOW TO PREPARE → SEE LIVE ALERTS FOR YOUR ISLAND →