Tourists who flock to Hawaii’s beaches may not realize that our state has a high rate of drowning deaths. In the last 6 calendar years, an average of 64 people have died each year. The casualty rate is almost evenly split between tourists and residents.
On December 13 in my old Bloglines blog, I mentioned that the University of Hawaii had developed an ocean safety web site, featuring real-time information from Hawaii’s beaches.
According to an article in today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Governor Linda Lingle launched a new and improved version of the UH site at hawaiibeachsafety.org
The RSS feed still posts the conditions for every beach listed on the site, and that is an awkward solution. Individual RSS feeds for each of the beaches would be much more usable, as most users only want information for one or two specific beaches. I’ve tried using the comprehensive RSS on my mobile phone, and it’s a dismal experience.
The RSS feed is located at http://oceansafety.soest.hawaii.edu/features/recommend_beaches.xml
That domain name redirects to the UH site, with pages that indicate conditions on these islands’ beaches:
Comments on this entry are closed.