As of Monday afternoon, officials confirmed 99 people have died, up from the previous count of 96. Hawaii Gov. Josh Green told CNN Monday the death toll would likely increase “very significantly” and could double over the next 10 days.
- While the deadly fires spread rapidly into neighborhoods, the largest siren system in the world was silent. Emergency communications with residents were largely limited to mobile phones and broadcasters at a time when most power and cell service was already knocked out.
- The state’s main electric provider, Hawaiian Electric, is facing a lawsuit claiming power lines blown over by high winds helped to cause the destructive Lahaina wildfire, though an official cause of the wildfire has not yet been determined.
- Hawaii’s emergency management agency reported last year the risk posed by wildfires to human life was low. Officials underestimated the deadly threat of wildfires even as they acknowledged a lack of necessary resources to mitigate them, records show.
So basically the system didn’t have backups to protect against this type of disaster and the government wasn’t expecting something like this to happen.
Some people try to say the sirens are for tsunamis/hurricanes and using them would potentially have made people panic and run in-land.
I also heard because of all the invasive agriculture that made the fires much worse due to old growth that used to previously feed cattle.
But do your own research to verify those. I dont live in Hawaii
I lived on Hawaii for a time. It is absolutely BAFFLING to me how our disaster warning system, one of the most badass on the fucking globe, could have failed in this spectacular a fashion.
