Lahaina, Hawaii fire
8 August 2023
Image: US Coast Guard/Wikipedia
On 8 August 2023 a vicious fire had swept across the town of Lahaina located on the island Maui in the US state and island archipelago of Hawaii. Unusually windy weather had started a series of fires on Maui in early August but the Lahaina fire was the worst episode in this sequence on events. As of 2 September, 385 people were officially believed to have died in the fire. This makes the fire the deadliest in the US in over 100 years.
The fire occurred under unusual weather conditions. A cyclone out in the ocean had brought winds gusting up to 80 mph (35 m/s) to the area. Meanwhile, a dry spell had created unusually dry conditions to an area that is generally rather dry due to local climatic conditions.
The fire stared in a residential neighborhood about a mile and a half (about 2.5 km) north of the city center. The initial cause is unclear - some sources believe it was a spark flying off of electrical wire from a utility pole downed by high winds, while others speculate the fire ad a different origin. Before long, the fire had swept through the historic center of own bringing with it the death of hundreds and near complete annihilation of the town.
Some remarkable issues had been brought to the by the fire. For one thing, the water supply system, partially consisting of above ground pipes nearly collapsed rending the firefighters near powerless to fight the blaze as it was gaining strength. The high winds had made it impossible to use water-carrying aircraft to aid in the effort. But, even before the fire had grown to the size where a massive effort was required, firefighters responding to the initial small fire had abandoned it to respond to other fires in the area as they had considered the small blaze in the area "contained".
A number of factors had contributed to the problem - issues that were talked about but never properly addressed. One such issue was the shrinkage of agriculture on the island. In the last 50 years the area dedicated to agriculture on the island had more than halved. What that meant was that many areas that in years prior had been occupied by well-watered crops (papaya, sugar cane, etc.) were occupied by dry grass. Most of the grasses that caused the problem were invasive non-native species that were more given to drying out than native species. It was indeed a perfect storm of deadly factors that had made this fire as deadly as it ended up being.
We are going to have to wait for more data to become available to draw any definitive conclusions. However, even what little we know thus fr points at massive and sunning lack of both knowledge of the factors involved and proper management of the natural and human-made risk factors. And, while Lahaina may be a barely known name to many, unless we draw proper conclusions and improve our approach to the management of our environment and out first response services we will likely continue to see more avoidable and preventable disasters.
References
Lahaina Inferno Began After Firefighters Departed a ‘Contained’ Scene
Serge F. Kovaleski and Mike Baker, The New York Times, 23 August 2023
2023 Hawaii wildfires (wiki)
Archived 23 August 2023
New "FBI-validated" Lahaina wildfire missing list has 385 names
CBS/AP, 2 September 2023
Maui’s neglected grasslands caused Lahaina fire to grow with deadly speed
Imogen Piper, Joyce Lee, Elahe Izadi and Brianna Sacks, Washington Post, 2 September 2023
As Inferno Grew, Lahaina’s Water System Collapsed
Mike Baker, Kellen Browning and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, The New York Times, 13 August 2023
Why the Maui Fire Is So Shocking
Henry Grabar, Slate, 11 August 2023
Author links and affiliations
There are still more than 1000 children missing.
The water wasn't unavailable because above ground pipes burned. The water was shut off. The sirens were not sounded. The police blocked the streets out of town. The schools shut down and sent kids home. The buses from the school all ended up across the island near a cement plant where known subterranean tunnels are sited. Anomalous temperatures that are not at all usual to wildfire caused glass to melt in vehicles that lacked surrounding fuels to produce substantial heat, 2500F to melt glass. Scores of people died in their cars on the roads police blocked. The burned properties are walled off and their owners are prevented from possessing their property. Officials continually lowball the numbers of deceased, and also refuse to condemn the water being shut off, or the sirens failing to alert people to the danger, and do not even comment on the police roadblocks that prevented people from fleeing the fire, or continue to prevent their access to their property. The state has stated it's intention to acquire the burned property, regardless of the willingness of people to sell it. FEMA is blocking emergency supplies from reaching survivors, and people claim water supplied them isn't potable, but in fact is tainted and causing illness. Insurance companies are refusing to pay on policies they sold.
Few events produce so much evidence of malfeasance as the Lahaina fire has.
Thanks!
I have heard of the missing children but never anything definitive.
Do you have sources for that.
The insurance companies tend to through their bureaucracies into the mix but typically eventually pay.
There are numerous sources that have managed to get around the information blackout that is being imposed on social media. Go to Odysee.com and search the word 'maui'. All of the videos you can find there have at least part of the list I provided above. The media are not providing the victims an opportunity to relate these facts. However, of the individual reporters on the ground in Maui, all of them are in agreement on the basic facts that ~3000 children were sent home from school, the sirens did not sound, the water was turned off, and the police blocked the road out of town, which is why there is a line of burned cars in the street leading out of town.
Max Igan's last video showed the school buses across the island near a cement plant and a known location of subterranean tunnels, which he also showed video from. Many videos show the burned area being walled off, massive numbers of police preventing people from accessing their property inside the wall, and keeping them from taking pictures. It is also not permitted to fly drones above the area. Also the Chief of Police in Maui is the same guy that was in charge in Las Vegas when the Jason Aldean concert was shot up a few years ago, named Pelletier.
There are no videos from people on the ground that survived the fire that I can find that contradict or contest any of the items I have mentioned. Frankly, I cannot remember an event that produced such solidarity of all witnesses as has the Lahaina fire.
Here's a quick video of Tulsi Gabbard on Joe Rogan discussing the failure of Hawaiian government.
https://odysee.com/@EmpathicTimes:d/maui-update!-rogan-tulsi-discuss-maui.:f
OK. I have seen reports of this kind.
What I have not seen, though, is mentions of any individual children not accounted for.
Without that, any such reports are at best inconclusive.
The media blackout is preventing that information from being public. There is nothing I can find from corporate media on the matter at all. That is conclusive evidence of a total blackout by media on these issues.
How?
A family with a missing kid can somehow block their statements from getting out there just because the CNN or Fox would not run it?
I don't think that is possible in our day and age - especially when we have alternative, independent media.
The media are just not covering the story. The owners of the media corporations determine what is broadcast, and they're not sending their reporters into the field in Maui to interview the bereft people. The social media corporations simply ban or throttle posts from people, and only those with Starlink have been able to even post according to claims by one of the more prolific civilian reporters.
The independent, alternative media, including Hive posts, are wholly permissioned by ISPs that own the physical network they depend on to transmit their comment. Consider how increasingly coordination across industries from banking to social media is used to censor alternative narratives. How can Assange report war crimes from Belmarsh prison? How can Corbyn continue to participate in UK government without a bank account? Cloudflare can just eliminate websites. In addition to such overt mechanisms, covert mechanisms further extend censorship. Myriad 'suicides' by double tapping to the back of the head have silenced voices. Censorship is relatively facile today.
#hive #posh
Every time there's a fire like this, there's a lot of damage and the way we've been hearing on the news that there are still hundreds of children who are missing, that's very bad news. We can pray here. May Allah protect the lives of all people
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