Hawaii wildfires: Maui’s emergency leader RESIGNS citing ‘health reasons’ a day after claiming it didn’t matter his team didn’t set off island’s sirens – as death toll hits 111

The head of Maui’s Emergency Management Agency resigned Thursday night for health reasons.

It comes a day after Chief Herman Andaya told a press conference that he did not regret not activating the warning sirens as the fatal bushfire swept across the island.

Andaya said he chose to send alerts via mobile devices, radio waves, television and the opt-in alert system for residents of the province, but not via siren.

Despite claims that the warning sirens could have saved hundreds of people who instead burned in the deadly fire, Andaya argued that the sirens are generally used for tsunami warnings and Hawaiians are trained to seek higher ground when they go off, which in this case it would have led them to the blazing inferno.

Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said in a statement Thursday that he had accepted Andaya’s resignation.

Andaya also claimed that even if the sirens had sounded, there would have been significant areas of land where there were no sirens and therefore hypothetically people would not have been saved by them.

“Given the severity of the crisis we are facing, my team and I will place someone in this key position as soon as possible and I look forward to making that announcement soon,” Bissen said.

Andaya defended his experience and qualification for the office at a midweek press conference held by Governor Josh Green.

“If we had run the siren that night, we are afraid people would have gotten mauka (towards the mountains) and if that was the case, they would have gone into the fire,” he said.

“I should also note that there are no sirens mauka, or on the mountainside, where the fire spread down. So even if we had sounded the siren, we couldn’t have saved those people there on the mountainside.’

The response came after a reporter said several survivors of the blaze — which killed at least 110 people — said their neighbors and loved ones may have been saved if the sirens had gone off before they noticed the 1,000-degree flames. their houses.

The reporter also appeared to question Andaya’s resume and how he had no previous experience in emergency management before taking up his current position in 2017. He was chief of staff to a former mayor.

The member of the press then asked if he would consider handing over further responsibility to someone else.

Andaya said the claim that he had no experience before taking up his current position is “not true”.

He argued that his employment history included time in the housing department, and as a staff member in the mayor’s office, during which time he “reported to the emergency centers.”

People walk past devastated by wildfires in Lahaina – search teams estimated to have covered 38 percent of affected area

Maui Mayor Richard Bissen defended Andaya at Wednesday’s press conference along with Governor Green

“Saying I am not qualified I think is incorrect,” he added.

Both Governor Green and Maui Mayor Richard Bissen defended Andaya against the journalist’s quasi-accusations. Green agreed that his response to hearing the sirens would be to expect a tsunami.

Andaya downplayed the importance of the island’s siren system in the year leading up to the tragedy. That reports NBC News.

In meetings dating back to 2019, he repeatedly called the sounding of civil service sirens “a last resort,” according to transcripts of the county’s public safety committee meetings.

Green confirmed on Wednesday that the death toll had risen to 110, even though search teams have searched only 38 percent of the affected area.

Officials, including Green, have said the death toll is likely to continue to rise in the coming weeks.

There is growing concern that the dead include many children who have been confined to their homes as schools are closed and parents are at work.

“Our parents work one, two, three jobs to make ends meet and they can’t afford to take a day off,” says Jessica Sill, a kindergarten teacher at Lahaina’s King Kamehameha III Elementary School, on Wall Street. Journal. “Without school, (children) couldn’t go anywhere that day.”

The death toll has now risen to at least 111 people and fears are growing that many children are among the dead – as they were left home alone when schools delayed opening due to power outages before the storm.

A kindergarten teacher in Lahaina said a seven-year-old boy — who is the cousin of two of her former students — was found dead with his family in a burnt-out car.

Jessica Sill, who teaches at King Kamehameha III Elementary School, told the Wall Street Journal, “Our parents work one, two, three jobs to make ends meet and they can’t afford to take a day off.

“Without school, (children) couldn’t go anywhere that day.”

Public schools on Maui have begun the process of reopening and traffic has also resumed on a main road, signaling that the painful recovery process is underway.