Old Lahaina Town Utterly Destroyed - Recovery & Relief Efforts

[sistersue]

I just don't understand the failure of the emergency sirens.  Tragic failure.

I agree.  This is what haunts me the most.  If those sirens had gone off at 3pm Tuesday and the roads hadn't been blocked by "authorities", in my opinion, most of the lives would have been saved. I saw on CNN a man who said he called in the Lahaina fire at 6am on Tuesday because a power pole had fallen in front of his house and started a grass fire. If only they had used the sirens at 6am this could have been avoided.

[randomq]

What I've heard so far from news networks is that no one "chose" to use the sirens. Could they have been used? Did they have battery backup, and working communications?

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

the failure of the emergency sirens

Or police alerts. They regularly drive past my home during hurricane & tsunami warnings telling me to evacuate. There must have been some police presence in Lahaina before they themselves had to evacuate? Not even warnings on Front Street?

[HiloJulie]

As I understand it, each siren is solar powered with batteries. It is activated by special telephones calling special phone numbers. As I further understand it there is no "hard wire" from a control room to a siren - it's all microwave and wireless.

I have read numerous reports of Maui County officials posting alerts during all of this on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter)

That outrages me more than anything about the use or lack of use of the Emergency Alert System. If we can pay people to post on Facebook and X - where are the people we pay to activate the Emergency Alert System? Not just sirens, but ALL OF IT?

My looming fear is that even though numerous people escaped, some surviving while others unfortunately perished, but how many sheltered in place? 

If so, we will be in a world of hurt for a long long time.

[HiloJulie]

Confirmed souls lost now at 96

['elepaio]

" There was a press conference yesterday where a reporter asked the Police Chief (who was the incident commander during the mass shooting event in Las Vegas several years back) as to why only 2 victims had been identified out of the then 89 (now 93) victims. " ..

Read this folks ..With this person in charge, we will never know the true scope..

[HiloJulie]

I watched Governor Green’s update. 

In as much as I hate to say it, but I think we need to prepare ourselves for a significant increase in confirmed loss of life.

[MarkP]

If we can round up to 100 now and they are just starting to go through the structures I can see that number doubling or tripling easily. I hope not.

A controversial observation: As with the Paradise CA fire it seems that the houses burn preferentially. In many cases you can see where houses burned downwind from burned-over fields but in many cases burned houses are downwind of unburned houses and trees/green areas are adjacent to burned areas. This observation was made for the CA fires too. I suppose this should not be surprising since we build houses to keep the rain out so they are nice and dry inside. This has a faint flavor of victim-shaming which is to be avoided. After all the place never burned like this before in 200 years. However if this is a real phenomenon it has something to tell us.

After the CA fires I read a few articles about propagation of fires and it is the snowstorm of tiny embers that has to be defended against. Every facet of the house construction must be addressed. Many of the houses I have lived in during my decades living in Hawaii would have been sitting ducks.

If there was an earthquake in asia or the west coast there would be a discrete triggering event and hours of warning. Even an earthquake on the Big Island would have the same definitive trigger and calculated arrival time even if only minutes. In this case with winds gusting 70mph and brushfires being fairly common, to go from "contained brushfire" to "sound the sirens" would take literally seconds.

[terracore]

In this case with winds gusting 70mph and brushfires being fairly common, to go from "contained brushfire" to "sound the sirens" would take literally seconds.

People in the disaster preparedness field are aware of "evacuation fatigue".  They want to make sure that when they cry wolf it's more than likely a wolf, otherwise in the future people won't listen to them.  I know it was a different agency that was responsible but we all remember this one from 2018:

BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

People started driving 100+ MPH on the highways and pushing their kids into storm drains.

Our disaster preparedness officials still have a lot to learn.

[AaronM]

Almost had a fucking heart attack that day.  I've been pointing to that to show the incompetence of emergency preparedness