To the Honorable Governor of Guam,

I am writing this letter to formally document a failure of leadership and common sense regarding the management of emergency shelters during this typhoon event. As an occupant at the Maria A. Ulloa Elementary School shelter, I am witnessing a dangerous contradiction in government policy that knowingly places the public—including small children—in harm’s way.

While your administration and the Joint Information Center repeatedly mandate that residents remain strictly indoors due to the life-threatening hazards present during Condition of Readiness (COR) 1, your own shelter design forces us to go outside to access restroom facilities. It is a profound failure of planning to set up a shelter where the most basic human needs require exposing people, including 50-pound children, to high winds and potential debris in the middle of an active emergency.

Furthermore, your office failed to provide adequate warning that food support would not be available, despite it being a standard expectation in previous events. By failing to communicate this change, you have forced families and individuals to leave the safety of their shelters to find food, directly undermining your own safety directives.

This is not a failure of weather; this is a failure of management. If your officials cannot coordinate a facility where basic needs are met without forcing occupants to walk outside in hazardous conditions, they have no business overseeing emergency operations.

I urge you to immediately review the protocols of the officials responsible for these shelters and remove those who have demonstrated such a lack of common sense. The safety of the public, particularly our children, is not a matter of convenience—it is a matter of life and death.

I expect a swift resolution to these logistical failures.

Sincerely,

Clifford Ray Hackett