Emergency Unpreparedness

On May 4, 2023, a wildfire ignited near our farm.

Despite the fact that our community was directly in the path of wind-driven flames, the local Hawai'i County emergency management sirens never sounded.

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I wrote about it here...

 

It was one-thirty p.m. or so that we first smelled the smoke. It took all of thirty seconds to identify the source—a widening plume downslope from our farm, carried directly toward us by the trade winds.

It was, what, maybe half an hour later that the power went down.

By three p.m. the smoke plume had grown by orders of magnitude, and ash was falling like black snow. One of our neighbors, a retired firefighter, hosed down the long, dry grass on the north side of his house, obviously worried about embers floating in on the trades.

Meanwhile, we went through our afternoon routine, making sure chickens, geese, and sheep had extra food and water. Later we noticed our clothes smelled like smoke, which was less surprising than it was jarring.

Dusk came early as smoke swept over and around us. We brought out an array of battery powered lights and joked about turning on the ceiling fans hanging inert above our heads...

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At the July meeting of our community association, we were informed by our County Council representative that the reason local sirens weren't used was that "...in the view of emergency management, there wasn't sufficient cause to alert the public."

Here's the thing, though—many people who live in this area could see smoke and ash and approaching flames. And since the power was down, people who were homebound for medical reasons were at risk. 

Despite that, someone at Hawai'i County emergency management decided no communication was necessary—not even a quick cell phone alert to let people know what was going on.

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Between August 8 and August 9, 2023, a wildfire on Maui raced through historic Lahaina town.

The local emergency management sirens never sounded.

According to the head of the Maui County Emergency Management Agency, "...the sirens are used primarily for tsunamis, and that's the reason why almost all of them are found on the coastline. The public is trained to seek higher ground in the event that the sirens sounded. If that was the case, then they would've gone into the fire."

I suppose there's no way to know if people hearing an emergency siren would blindly rush out the door and toward an oncoming firestorm. Or if they'd figure out, somehow, that the alert was actually about the fire that was closing in on them at a reported mile per minute.

It's possible, one supposes, that rather than jump into their cars and try to escape on impassable roads, more people might have jumped into the water as the flames consumed the town. Humans are adaptable that way, sometimes.

But there were no sirens—because somebody in charge of local emergency management decided "the largest single integrated public safety outdoor siren warning system in the world" would do more harm than good.

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Post Script

According to the "Siren quick facts" at the County of Maui web site:

• The all-hazard siren system can be used for a variety of both natural and human-caused events; including tsunamis, hurricanes, dam breaches, flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, terrorist threats, hazardous material incidents, and more.

A week and a half ago, more than 13,000 people called Lahaina home. Countless more worked and played there, against a backdrop of timeless tropical beauty. 

Today, more than 110 people are confirmed dead and a thousand are still unaccounted for.

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Update:

"Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator Herman Andaya has resigned effective immediately, Mayor Richard Bissen’s office announced.

"Andaya cited health reasons, the announcement said."