How communication failure scorched Hawaii island

Wailuku (Hawaii), August 12

In the hours before a wildfire engulfed the town of Lahaina, Maui County officials failed to activate sirens that would have warned the entire population of the approaching flames and instead relied on a series of sometimes confusing social media posts that reached a much smaller audience.

Power and cellular outages for residents further stymied communication efforts.

Radio reports were scarce, some survivors reported, even as the blaze began to consume the town. Road blocks then forced fleeing drivers onto one narrow downtown street, creating a bottleneck that was quickly surrounded by flames on all sides.

At least 67 people have been confirmed dead so far.

The silent sirens have raised questions about whether everything was done to alert the public in a state that possesses an elaborate emergency warning system for a variety of dangers including wars, volcanoes, hurricanes and wildfires.

Hector Bermudez left his apartment at Lahaina Shores shortly after 4:30 p.m. Tuesday after the smell of smoke woke him up from a nap. He asked his neighbour if he was also leaving.

“He said, ‘No, I am waiting for the authorities to see what they are going to do,’” Bermudez recounted. “And I said, ‘No, no no, please go. This smoke is going to kill us. You have to go. Please. You gotta get out of here. Don’t wait for nobody.’” His neighbour, who is about 70 and has difficulty walking, refused.

Bermudez doesn’t know if he survived.

Officials with Maui’s Emergency Management Agency did not immediately respond Friday to questions about sirens and other communications issues.

Hawaii’s Attorney General Anne Lopez said her office will be conducting a comprehensive review of decision-making and standing policies surrounding the wildfires.

“My Department is committed to understanding the decisions that were made before and during the wildfires and to sharing with the public the results of this review,” she said in a statement Friday, adding that “now is the time to begin this process of understanding.” The Associated Press created a timeline of the wildfires, using information from multiple sources including the county’s announcements, state and local Emergency Management Alerts and interviews with officials and survivors.

The timeline shows public updates on the fires were spotty and often vague, and much of the county’s attention was focused on another dangerous, larger fire in Upcountry Maui that was threatening neighbourhoods in Kula.

It shows no indication that county officials ever activated the region’s all-hazard siren system, and reveals other emergency alerts were scarce.

In the hours before the wildfires began, however, warnings about high winds were frequent and widely disseminated by the county and other agencies. A hurricane passing far to the south was expected to bring gusts of up to 65 mph (105 kph), residents were told on Monday.

The Upcountry fire started first, reported not long after midnight on Tuesday, and the first evacuations near Kula followed.

The fire near Lahaina started later, around 6:37 a.m. Tuesday. Some homes in Lahaina’s most inland neighbourhood were evacuated, but by 9:55 a.m. the county reported that the fire was fully contained. Still, the announcement included another warning that high winds would remain a concern for the next 24 hours.

The power also went out early that morning, leaving several thousand customers in the Lahaina/West Maui region and Upcountry without electricity. Several downed power lines required repair.

By 11 a.m., firefighting crews from several towns and the Hawaii Department of Lands had converged on the Upcountry fire, but wind gusts reaching 80 mph (129 kph) made conditions unsafe for helicopters. At 3:20 p.m., more Upcountry neighbourhoods were evacuated.

The Lahaina fire, meanwhile, had escaped containment and forced the closure of the Lahaina Bypass road by 3:30 p.m. The announcement, however, didn’t make it into a county fire update until 4:45 p.m. and didn’t show up on the county Facebook page until nearly 5 p.m., when survivors say flames were surrounding the cars of families trapped downtown.

But while the Lahaina fire was spreading, Maui County and Hawaii Emergency Management Agency officials were making other urgent announcements — including a Facebook post about additional evacuations near the Upcountry fire and an announcement that the acting governor had issued an emergency proclamation.

In the Upcountry evacuation Facebook post at 3:20 p.m., Fire Assistant Chief Jeff Giesea shared an ominous warning.

“The fire can be a mile or more from your house, but in a minute or two, it can be at your house,” Giesea said.

Mike Cicchino lived below the Lahaina Bypass in one of Lahaina’s more inland neighbourhoods. He went to his house at 3:30 pm and minutes later realised his neighbourhood was in flames.

He yelled to the neighbour kids to get their mom and leave. He ran inside to collect his wife and the dogs they were watching. Cicchino, along with others in the neighbourhood, then jumped in their cars to leave. He listened for announcements on his car radio, but said there was no information.