Maui’s top auxiliaries were on another island when the wildfires started, it turned out Wednesday — and did not participate in a call about response until five hours after the fires broke out.
Dozens of senior bureaucrats gathered on August 8 at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, for the annual meeting of FEMA coordinators in the Pacific region.
The first fire on Maui, the Upcounty Fire, broke out in the early hours of August 8.
A school near Lahaina was evacuated around 6:40 a.m. that day, but an emergency call was not made until nearly five hours later, at 11 a.m.
At 09:00 the fire was declared ‘under control’. CNN reported.
But by 3:30 p.m., the fire had spread so much around Lahaina that an evacuation order was issued for the city, and Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke, Hawaii’s acting governor, activated the Hawaii National Guard.
At least 115 people died in the fire and more than 1,000 people are still missing.
Herman Andaya, who led Maui’s emergency response, was on Oahu when the fires broke out. He resigned last week, nine days after the fires, due to health reasons
Major General Kenneth Hara (left), director of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HIEMA), and Don Aweau (right), executive officer of HIEMA, were also on Oahu when the fires broke out
James Barros, Administrator of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, was one of those present at the meeting in Oahu on Aug. 8
A spokesman for the state’s emergency management said so Hawaii News Now the “11 a.m. Coordinating Call” was held to discuss multiple wildfires that had started on the Big Island and Maui.
FEMA confirmed the fires were part of discussions at the conference, held at the Alohilani Beach Resort in Honolulu.
“Consultations took place about the fires among local, state and FEMA participants,” FEMA spokesman John Mills said.
It was unclear when Maui officials made the decision to return home and deal with the disaster, or who was in charge when the fires broke out.
Conference attendees included Herman Andaya, then-director of Maui County Emergency Management Agency, who defended the decision not to activate emergency alerts.
Andaya resigned on August 17, nine days after the bushfires, citing his health.
As it turned out, he had no background in disaster relief: Local news site Maui Now reported in 2017 that he had hired more than 40 other qualified candidates.
Also at the conference was Major General Kenneth Hara, director of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HIEMA); James Barros, administrator of HIEMA; and Don Aweau, director of HIEMA.
Andaya, who is leading Maui’s response, was joined by at least six state emergency leaders, Hawaii News Now reported.
Two of them — Barros and Aweau — were at the state’s Emergency Operations Center at 5 p.m. the day of the fires.
It is unclear when Andaya and Hara left the meeting.
Residents of Lahaina watch their hometown go up in flames on August 8
At least 115 people have died in the fires and more than 1,000 people are still missing
The fire in Lahaina is still raging on August 9
The fire devastated Lahaina and the picture is still smoldering in Kihei as of August 10
Maui officials are facing increasing questions about their handling of the disaster, including why the sirens were not activated and why no warning was issued.
Emergency preparedness experts have been accused of complacency after it emerged they deemed the risk of wildfires low despite the significant damage caused by the 2018 fires.
The cause of the fire remains unclear, but a lawsuit has been filed against Hawaii’s electric utility, accusing them of failing to shut down their power grid despite tailwind hurricanes and tinder-dry conditions.
Officials in Hawaii on Tuesday called on residents to submit DNA samples to help identify human remains, with the death toll currently standing at 115.
At the same time, researchers acknowledged that it’s possible that not all victims’ remains will ever be found.
Maui County prosecutor Andrew Martin, charged with running the family assistance center, said Tuesday he spoke with experts who have taken DNA samples elsewhere in mass-casualty disasters, and that he sees less readiness in Hawaii.
“The number of family members who come to deliver DNA samples is a lot lower than in other disasters,” he said.
Martin said he couldn’t explain why people seemed less willing to provide DNA samples — 104 had been collected so far.
But he hoped his reassurance that the DNA provided would only be used to identify remains, and not be turned over to any law enforcement database or agency, would lead more family members to come forward.
Investigators said at the press conference that there are still between 1,000 and 1,100 names on their list of people missing from the blaze.
But they also said the list was a complicated jumble, containing a number of people identified by a single name; others with missing data such as dates of birth; some people whose gender was not clear and also that there were likely duplicate reports from the same people as the list is compiled from different sources.
They made no prediction about when—or if—they would ever be able to complete the task of accounting for everyone on the list.
They also said they could not yet provide an estimate of the total number of people who would ultimately die from the fire.
A fire sparked by a faulty power line on the morning of Tuesday, August 8, is believed to have developed into the blaze that devastated Lahaina. Officials initially had the blaze under control, but a flare-up quickly spread
Maui Police Chief John Pelletier underlined that his department had 85 missing persons reports related to the fire on file so far — asking citizens to report missing family members or others directly to police if possible.
However, the devastation was so bad that Pelletier warned that even after the search for remains was over, “I can’t guarantee … we’ll get everyone.”
Authorities say they have now searched 100 percent of single-storey homes in the disaster area and are now targeting businesses and high-rise buildings.
Moody’s catastrophe risk modeling firm said it estimates economic losses from the Hawaii wildfires at $4 to $6 billion.
However, the company’s Risk Management Solutions division says in a report that most economic damages are expected to be covered by insurance, on the order of about 75 percent or more.
Post-event loss amplification is expected to be high in this case due to the islanding effect on supply chains, high labor costs in construction in general, inflationary impacts during the expected long recovery period, and potential regulations and regulatory requirements. Rajkiran Vojjala. , vice president of modeling at Moody’s RMS.