Maui wildfire death toll hits 67 as questions raised over warnings
Maui wildfire death toll hits 67 as questions raised over warnings
The death toll from the Maui wildfires rose to 67 on Friday as search teams combed through the smoldering ruins of Lahaina, and Hawaiian officials sought to determine how the inferno spread so rapidly through the historic resort town with little warning.
In the ensuing hours, the county posted a series of evacuation orders on Facebook as the fire spread through the town.
This appears to be just a small piece of the story, not like it was responsible for the disaster, but... is this implying that Facebook is considered a primary ergency alert system? I don't know how anyone can consider that anything but GROSSLY negligent.
If Facebook is critical infrastructure, then regulate it as such, or seize and nationalize it.
The island includes emergency sirens intended to warn of natural disasters and other threats, but they did not appear to have sounded during the fire.
Holy shit. This is just tragic. Who knows how many lives could have been saved if they'd had a proper warning?
From the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency website
Hawaiʻi has the largest single integrated Outdoor Siren Warning System for Public Safety in the world. 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.
They test them here every month too. Shameful they didn't sound them when needed the most.
Look at paradise. They had an emergency alert that went out. All it did was gridlock the entire town and people just died on the street instead of in their house. I get that we all want to be mad at something, but the emergency notification would have made a negligible difference given the speed and ferocity of this fire.
We’s gon hafta cut moar of them taxes and get them trees some guns. That’ll do it kicks some horse shit GAAWD JESUS save them fetuses 😵💫
EDIT: The tax cuts come from somewhere. Public safety has been all but abandoned at this point.
Are the cops supposed to shoot the flames? Hawaii is like one of the most taxed states. Not to mention they have public safety systems. These rapid fires like this and paradise aren’t really something you can ever be prepared for at all. An entire town having to evacuate in less than 2 minutes is never going to successfully happen. No amount of money on this earth will change that. We can build better fire resistant buildings, and create defensible space, but this was kind of a last thought disaster for Hawaii.