That lack of planning by agencies including the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, Maui Fire Department and Maui Police hindered efforts to evacuate the historic town of Lahaina before the fire claimed 102 lives, the report said.
on Maui said in a report released Friday they found “no evidence” Hawaii officials made preparations for it, despite days of warnings that critical fire weather was about to arrive.A weather forecaster with the National Weather Service went above and beyond normal procedures by emailing fire managers on Aug. 4, 2023, to give them “unprecedented advance warning” of the danger that would develop on Aug.
The heroic efforts of firefighters and police — who frequently risked their lives, sometimes sprinting door-to-door to warn residents to leave or piling evacuees into their cars to drive them to safety — were undercut by a lack of planning asMaui fire commanders discussed the forecast, but “no evidence of pre-event preparedness plans by the MFD were produced,” the report said.
And despite the warnings from forecasters, the heads of the county emergency management agency and the Maui Fire Department were both off-island that day, attending conferences in Honolulu. The report said no one appeared to be in charge of strategic resource allocation. Nationally, the report noted, people think of Hawaii as a tropical vacation destination, not fire-prone. Even among residents it may be difficult to get excited about wildfire risk when “red-flag weather” — hot, dry and windy — isn’t much different from a typical summer day.
It called for better vegetation management and fire breaks. It also recommended providing alternate means of firefighting water supply for extreme events, including portable pumps to draw from pools, ponds and even the ocean. Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.
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