Honolulu is unique among major U.S. cities in both its isolation and its exposure to a wide range of natural and man-made disasters. We must be vigilant for hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and human malfeasance.

Whatever natural or man-made forces that can threaten a city have a reasonable chance of eventually impacting us.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors continues to emphasize the need to strengthen emergency preparedness and homeland security. We must literally be prepared for anything.

We want to provide the best planning, protection and maintenance possible.

Just last week, my entire Cabinet, senior staff and I underwent a two-day training course on the National Incident Management System. This training is critical for continued federal funding from the Department of Homeland Security.

Two recent catastrophic events in our nation have underscored the leadership responsibilities of local city government. The mayors of New York and New Orleans have faced situations that tested their abilities and those of their first responders on a scale that, hopefully, we will never encounter. The experiences of those two cities make it clear that every local municipal government needs to prepare, train and equip itself for those types of eventualities, because it is the city's police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and other emergency workers who will inevitably be the first on the scene.

As mayor, I view my leadership responsibilities for disaster management as twofold: preparation and public communications.

Preparation takes the form of assessment, planning, training and equipment procurement. We want our first responders to have every advantage when it comes to the quality of their gear and the thoroughness of their training.

The second part is the effective leadership that must be provided to the people during a crisis. This means the mayor must be involved, informed and connected to a survivable communications system that will allow him to reach the people and obtain reliable information and provide direction, working with the appropriate state and federal counterparts.

As soon as we took office last year, we began to evaluate best practices and the application of advanced technology to upgrade our capabilities. My first focus was on communications technology.

In both recent examples of major national disasters, lack of radio inter-operability surfaced as a recurring weakness. If the various first responders can't communicate, they can't effectively coordinate their efforts. Resources are misallocated, activities duplicated or left undone and, most tragically, lives lost.

Communications assets are also the key to keeping the mayor informed of events and providing public media connectivity so he can fulfill a genuine leadership role during a crisis.

Following our initial assessments, in early 2005, we identified some significant shortcomings in our existing communications infrastructure. These included the fact that our 7,000 800 MHz police radios couldn't talk to our 1,500 700 MHz firefighter units, and our Emergency Medical Services operations on VHS couldn't effectively communicate with either.

Survivability was also an issue, with most of our major microwave radio towers in a state of serious neglect and unlikely to still be standing after even moderate hurricane-force winds. We had a lot of work to do.

Immense progress has been made in the past 18 months, and Honolulu now ranks among the best in terms of inter-operable communications. Our radio towers are being repaired or replaced, and Honolulu is on the cutting edge of next-generation Internet protocol communications solutions.

All of our first responders can now effectively communicate and coordinate their activities.

A successful inter-operability communications exercise held in July, involving 350 of our police, firefighters, EMS crews, Civil Defense, and state and federal personnel such as the FBI shows just how far we've come.

Our work needs to continue, for when it comes to public safety, we cannot afford to rest on our laurels. We must continue to prepare our people with the best training and equipment we can provide so they will be able to do their jobs effectively when we need them the most.

Mufi Hannemann is mayor of Honolulu. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.