HONOLULU -- Although Honolulu International Airport officials said it would be very expensive, Gov. Linda Lingle on Monday said the airport should no longer be at the mercy of power outages.

Thousands of travelers spent hours stranded without food and water stuck with filthy restrooms.

As if pictures of damage from Kona and darkened streets of Waikiki weren't bad enough, there were also pictures of tourists fighting for water and gasping for air in restrooms with backed-up toilets at a supposedly modern American airport.

It was another blow to Hawaii's image as a tourist paradise.

"The event that we had yesterday should have taught us a lot of stuff," Hawaii Tourism Authority Chairman Rex Johnson said.

Johnson said that the state has resisted for years making Honolulu International Airport self-sufficient during a power outage. That way there would be power for ticket counters, security checkpoints or for bathrooms.

"The airlines have known for a long period of time that they didn't have that capability," state Department of Transportation director Rodney Haraga said.

The state said that running all airport operations would take 14 times the current emergency power. Until now, officials did not consider it cost-effective.

"It's an anomaly. What we didn't want to do was buy a 14-megawatt generator because that's a redundant system. (Hawaiian Electric Co.) is normally very reliable

The state was so confident, it never even drilled what would happen if the power went out for a long time.

Passengers arrived and were unable to board the planes.

"No, I don't believe we looked for that particular scenario,"

The governor said the lesson has now been learned.

"I think that the airport is a critical piece of infrastructure that needs to operate on its own," Lingle said.

The governor said money for the new generators could come from a massive statewide airport improvement program already in the works. Airlines and their passengers would pay the cost, she said.