WAILUKU, Hawaii (AP) \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 80 people have been confirmed dead so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 neighbor if he was also leaving.
Richy Palalay, who was born and raise in the Hawaii town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, shows his “Lahaina Grown” tattoo at an evacuation shelter in Wailuku, Hawaii on Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023. There’s concern that any homes rebuilt after a wildfire that tore through Lahaina will be targeted not at homegrown residents who give the town its spirit and identity but instead affluent outsiders seeking a tropical haven. That would turbo-charge what is already one of Hawaii’s gravest and biggest challenges: the exodus and of Native Hawaiian and local-born residents who can no longer afford to live in their homeland. (AP Photo\/Audrey McAvoy)
Lahaina residents worry a rebuilt Maui town could slip into the hands of affluent outsiders
A member of a search-and-rescue team walks along a street, Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii, following heavy damage caused by wildfires. (AP Photo\/Rick Bowmer)
As death toll from Maui fire reaches 89, authorities say effort to count the losses is just starting
Members of a search-and-rescue team walk along a street, Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii, following heavy damage caused by wildfire. (AP Photo\/Rick Bowmer)
Death toll from Maui wildfire reaches 89, making it the deadliest in the US in more than 100 years
\u201cHe said, \u2018No, I am waiting for the authorities to see what they are going to do,\u2019\u201d Bermudez recounted. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018No, no no, please go. This smoke is going to kill us. You have to go. Please. You gotta get out of here. Don\u2019t wait for nobody.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His neighbor, who is about 70 and has difficulty walking, refused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bermudez doesn\u2019t know if he survived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Officials with Maui\u2019s Emergency Management Agency did not immediately respond Friday to questions about sirens and other communications issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hawaii\u2019s Attorney General Anne Lopez said her office will be conducting a comprehensive review of decision-making and standing policies surrounding the wildfires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy 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,\u201d she said in a statement Friday, adding that \u201cnow is the time to begin this process of understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Associated Press created a timeline of the wildfires, using information from multiple sources including the county\u2019s announcements, state and local Emergency Management Alerts and interviews with officials and survivors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The timeline shows public updates on the fires were spotty and often vague, and much of the county\u2019s attention was focused on another dangerous, larger fire in Upcountry Maui that was threatening neighborhoods in Kula. It shows no indication that county officials ever activated the region\u2019s all-hazard siren system, and reveals other emergency alerts were scarce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Upcountry fire started first, reported not long after midnight on Tuesday, and the first evacuations near Kula followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fire near Lahaina started later, around 6:37 a.m. Tuesday. Some homes in Lahaina\u2019s most inland neighborhood 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 neighborhoods were evacuated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019t make it into a county fire update until 4:45 p.m. and didn\u2019t show up on the county Facebook page until nearly 5 p.m., when survivors say flames were surrounding the cars of families trapped downtown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But while the Lahaina fire was spreading, Maui County and Hawaii Emergency Management Agency officials were making other urgent announcements \u2014 including a Facebook post about additional evacuations near the Upcountry fire and an announcement that the acting governor had issued an emergency proclamation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Upcountry evacuation Facebook post at 3:20 p.m., Fire Assistant Chief Jeff Giesea shared an ominous warning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe fire can be a mile or more from your house, but in a minute or two, it can be at your house,\u201d Giesea said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mike Cicchino lived below the Lahaina Bypass in one of Lahaina\u2019s more inland neighborhoods. He went to his house at 3:30 p.m. and minutes later realized his neighborhood was quickly being enveloped by flames.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He yelled to the neighbor 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 neighborhood, then jumped in their cars to leave. He listened for announcements on his car radio, but said there was essentially no information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The government\u2019s social media attention turned from Upcountry back to Lahaina at 4:29 p.m., when Hawaii EMA posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the local Maui EMA had announced an immediate evacuation for an inland subdivision in Lahaina. Residents were directed to shelter at the Lahaina Civic Center on the north side of town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just before 5 p.m., Maui County shared a new Lahaina fire report on Facebook: \u201cFlareup forces Lahaina Bypass road closure; shelter in place encouraged.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many were already running from the flames. Lynn Robison evacuated from her apartment near the waterfront\u2019s Front Street at 4:33 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere was no warning. There was absolutely none. Nobody came around. We didn\u2019t see a fire truck or anybody,\u201d Robison said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lana Vierra left her neighborhood about a mile (less than 2 kilometers) away around the same time. Her boyfriend had stopped by and told her he\u2019d seen the approaching fire on the drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe told me straight, \u2018People are going to die in this town; you gotta get out,\u2019\u201d she recalled. There had been no sirens, no alerts on her cellphone, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But access to the main highway \u2014 the only road leading in and out of Lahaina \u2014 was cut off by barricades set up by authorities. The roadblocks forced people directly into harm\u2019s way, funneling cars onto Front Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll the locals were pigeonholed into Lahaina in that corner there, and I felt like the county put us into a death trap,\u201d Cicchino said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nathan Baird and his family escaped by driving past a barricade, he told Canadian Broadcaster CBC Radio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTraffic was all over the place. Nobody knew where to go. They were trying to make everybody go up to the Civic Center and \u2026 it just didn\u2019t make sense to me,\u201d Baird said. \u201cI was so confused. At first, I was like, \u2018Why are all these people driving towards the fire?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cicchino and his wife became trapped by walls of flame as Front Street burned. They ran for the ocean, spending hours crouching behind the sea wall or treading water in the choppy waves, depending on which area felt safest as the ever-changing fire raged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At 5:20 p.m., Maui County shared another Lahaina fire update on Facebook: Evacuations in one subdivision were continuing, but access to the main highway was back open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. Coast Guard\u2019s first notification about the fires was when the search and rescue command center in Honolulu received reports of people in the water near Lahaina at 5:45 p.m., said Capt. Aja Kirksy, commander of Coast Guard Sector Honolulu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The boats were hard to see because of the smoke, but Cicchino and others used cellphones to flash lights at the vessels, guiding them in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cicchino helped load children into the Coast Guard boats, and at one point loaned his cellphone \u2014 which had been stashed in his wife\u2019s waterproof pouch \u2014 to a member of the guard so they could contact fire crews. He said the rescue took hours, and he and his wife were finally brought out of Lahaina around 1 a.m. Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maui County Facebook posts around 8:40 p.m. Tuesday urged residents in the surrounding area who weren\u2019t impacted by the fires to shelter in place, and said smoke was forcing more road closures. A commenter pointed out the communication problems just before 9 p.m. \u201cYou do realize that all communication to Lahaina is cut off and nobody can get in touch with anyone on that side,\u201d the commenter wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Riley Curran, who fled his Lahaina home after climbing up a neighboring apartment building to get a better look at the fire, doesn\u2019t think there is anything the county could have done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that people didn\u2019t try to do anything. It\u2019s that it was so fast no one had time to do anything,\u201c Curran said. \u201cThe fire went from 0 to 100.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Cicchino said it all felt like the county wasn\u2019t prepared and government agencies weren\u2019t communicating with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI feel like the county really cost a lot of peoples\u2019 lives and homes that day. I felt like a lot of this could have been prevented if they just thought about this stuff in the morning, and took their precaution,\u201d he said. \u201cYou live in a fire zone. They have a lot of fires. You need to prepare for fires.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The all-hazard sirens are tested each month to ensure they are in working order. During the most recent test, Aug. 1, they malfunctioned in three separate incidents in three counties. Maui\u2019s siren tone was too short, so officials repeated the test later that day, successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Karl Kim directs the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center, a University of Hawaii-based organization that develops training materials to help officials respond to natural disasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kim said it\u2019s too soon to know exactly how the warning and alert system might have saved more lives in Lahaina, and noted that wildfires are often more challenging to manage than volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and even earthquakes because they are more difficult to detect and track over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a wake-up call,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to invest more in understanding of wildfires and the threats that they provide, which aren\u2019t as well understood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n