As it emerged Wednesday, Maui’s top emergency response personnel were on a different island when the wildfires broke out — and only participating in a call for response five hours after the fires broke out.
Dozens of senior bureaucrats gathered August 8 on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Oahu for the annual meeting of FEMA Pacific Coordinators.
The first fire on Maui, the Upcounty Fire, broke out in the early hours of August 8th.
Around 6:40 a.m. that day, a school near Lahaina was evacuated, but an 911 call was not made until almost five hours later, at 11:00 a.m.
As CNN reported, the fire was declared “contained” by 9 a.m.
However, by 3:30 p.m., the fire had spread so severely around Lahaina that an evacuation order was issued for the city and Lt. Governor Sylvia Luke, Hawaii’s acting governor who activated the Hawaiian National Guard.
At least 115 people died in the fire and more than 1,000 are still missing.
Herman Andaya, who led the emergency response to Maui, was on Oahu when the fires broke out. He resigned last week, nine days after the fires, due to ill health
Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara (left), director of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HIEMA), and Don Aweau (right), senior official at HIEMA, were also on Oahu when the fires broke out
James Barros, Administrator of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, was among those in attendance at the August 8 Oahu gathering
A spokesman for state emergency management told Hawaii News Now that the “coordination call was held around 11 a.m.” to discuss multiple wildfires that had started on the Big Island and Maui.
FEMA confirmed the fires were part of discussions during the conference, held at the Alohilani Beach Resort in Honolulu.
“There was consultation on the fires among local, state and FEMA participants,” said FEMA spokesman John Mills.
It was unclear when Maui officials made the decision to return home and deal with the disaster, or who was in command when the fires broke out.
Attendees at the conference included Herman Andaya, then director of the Maui County Emergency Management Agency, who defended the decision not to activate emergency alerts.
Andaya resigned on August 17, nine days after the wildfires, due to ill health.
It turns out he had no disaster relief experience: local news site Maui Now reported in 2017 that he had hired over 40 other qualified applicants.
Also present at the conference was Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, director of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HIEMA); James Barros, Administrator for HIEMA; and Don Aweau, Managing Director of HIEMA.
Andaya, who is leading Maui’s response, was accompanied by at least six state emergency chiefs, Hawaii News Now reported.
Two of them – Barros and Aweau – were at the state’s Emergency Operations Center by 5pm on the day of the fires.
It is unclear when Andaya and Hara left the meeting.
On August 8, Lahaina residents watch as their hometown burns
At least 115 people have died in the fires and more than 1,000 people remain missing
The Lahaina fire is still raging as of August 9
The fire devastated Lahaina and 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 given.
Emergency preparedness experts have been accused of complacency after it was revealed they assessed the risk of wildfires as low – despite significant damage caused by the 2018 fires.
The cause of the fire remains unclear, but a lawsuit has been filed against Hawaii’s electric companies, accusing them of not shutting down their power grid despite the hurricane’s tailwinds and the tinder drought.
Officials in Hawaii on Tuesday urged residents to submit DNA samples to help identify human remains. The death toll is currently 115.
At the same time, investigators acknowledged that not all of the victims’ remains may ever be found.
Maui County Attorney Andrew Martin, who is assigned to lead the family support center, said Tuesday he’s spoken to experts who have done DNA testing in mass casualty disasters elsewhere and that he sees less preparedness in Hawaii.
“The number of family members who come here to provide DNA samples is much 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.
However, he hoped his assurances that the DNA provided would only be used to identify remains and would not be shared with a law enforcement database or agency would encourage 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 ongoing list of people missing from the fire.
But they also said the list was a complex mess that included some people identified with a single name; others with missing data such as dates of birth; The gender of some individuals was unclear and there were also likely duplicate reports of the same individuals as the list was compiled from different sources.
They made no prediction as to when — or if — they would ever complete the task of considering everyone on the list.
They also said they could not yet give an estimate of the total number of people ultimately killed by the fire.
A fire started by a failed power line on Tuesday morning, August 8, is believed to have developed into the conflagration that devastated Lahaina. Officials initially brought the fire under control, but it quickly spread
Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said his department has 85 missing persons reports related to the fire so far — and urged citizens to report missing family members or others directly to the police whenever possible.
However, the devastation was so bad that Pelletier warned, “I can’t guarantee we’ve got everyone, even though the search for the remains is over.”
Authorities say they have now searched 100 percent of single-story residential properties in the disaster area and have now searched businesses and high-rise buildings.
Moody’s Disaster Risk Modeling Division estimates the economic damage from the Hawaiian wildfires to be between $4 billion and $6 billion.
However, the company’s Risk Management Solutions division said in a report that most of the economic damage is expected to be covered by insurance, on the order of about 75 percent or more.
“In this case, high post-event loss amplification is expected due to the island effect on supply chains, generally high labor costs in construction, inflationary impacts during the expected long recovery period, and potential regulatory and legislative requirements,” said Rajkiran Vojjala, vice president of modeling at Moody’s RMS.