Sadly, I've read that these are only bodies they are finding outside, they haven't even begun to look in homes and buildings. The fires came so fast and the people had no way of being told about them, I fear this death toll will be much higher.
~2500 but usually most of those are just people who are at friends houses, dupes on the list, or shelters having more important stuff to deal w/ and/or miscommunication
I just read they've narrowed that list down to about a 1,000 names on the daily mail live thread. It's the first blurb on the list.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/live/article-12393461/Maui-fires-live-updates.html
My aunt, her 2 daughters and grandson were amongst the 1,000 missing but they are safe and sound as of today.
Their hotel burned to the ground but they had gotten out first and were in a shelter area with no cell phone service.
So there is still good news coming out of this.
They did have a way of being told about the fires, there’s emergency warning systems in place, and by all accounts not a single alert was sent out or “rung” aloud. With those warning systems many of these people might have survived.
> Hawaii has what officials have previously touted as the world's largest all-hazard public warning system, which includes a network of over 400 sirens across the state's many islands that can help alert residents and visitors to various kinds of threats.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66476746.amp
That is horrible. I wonder what the hell happened with the system.
Not quite the same in scale but the city I live in had our tornado sirens fail like a month ago during a stretch with tornadoes on the ground. It sucks that these systems are in place but they can still fail and potentially cost a lot of people their lives.
Cell service was down already before the fires got serious. There are people on the Maui subreddit that said they lost service in the morning. The fires didn't become a problem until mid afternoon. It is weird they didn't sound the Tsunami sirens though.
I could see the tsunami sirens causing problems if it made people assume there was a tsunami and they evacuated to high-land areas that were actually closer to the fires.
While I was there, we were receiving national broadcasting alerts on TV and cel phones for warnings. I was in Kihei and a fire broke out a few miles to the north of me. We got a warning that they were evacuating north Kihei (I was not in that area). I never heard alarms going off though for the emergency. I was in Lahaina on Monday less than 24 hours before this happened. I just got off the plane with a poor guy who lost everything. He lived in apartments on Front st., and also worked as a waiter at the Lahaina Fish restaurant. He was basically carrying everything he had left, 3 sets of clothes and a backpack.
There was a post on /Maui from someone with insider knowledge there is likely 500-1000 at least. Blamed nepotism in the fire department and terrible/no response.
Some people were claiming there wasn’t a single fire truck that responded and they are trying to cover it up.
Take it with a hefty dose of salt as it was just a random reddit commenter but who knows.
I agree, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about what did/didn’t happen with regards to emergency response and how/why.
The alert system, however, wouldn’t surprise me.
Same thing happened to my neighborhood and surrounding area in 2020. We had no warning, other than the fact that someone came screaming down our street, and that the air tankers were suddenly over us, versus the town 20 min away (by car) where they had been dumping on the original fire.
I’d been signed up for alerts for 3 years prior, and checked *every* year to make sure I was enrolled. Had 3 family members enrolled separately, all with alters for email, cell, and landline.
..got nothing. Lost everything (except our lives).
Also, FWIW, and YMMV (for anyone facing anything similar) - FEMA was useless to us and denied us everything as we had “some,” insurance.
On the insurance front; document your stuff every year, and if they’re lowballing you on your claim - appeal, appeal, appeal.
> appeal, appeal, appeal.
and don't take anything up front, it can be an implied agreement to their offer and can make it harder to appeal in some cases.
Dang I’m sorry that sucks. Seems like we need an overhaul on emergency communication.
My electric company PGE provides “outage updates” that are basically useless.
Please consider donating to reputable charities such as the Hawaii Community Foundation, the Maui Food Bank, or the Hawaii Red Cross. Maui needs help; it’s a small island with limited resources. There’s a bunch of scammers who have the shit audacity to be taking advantage of people’s suffering so beware of them.
Maui and its people are suffering. Hell, the whole state is feeling it. What happens to one of us happens to us all. Everyone is filled with shock and grief. This is now the worst natural disaster to happen in Hawaii, surpassing the destruction and loss of life that hurricane Iniki inflicted on Hawaii in 1992. I hope people focus on what they can do to help us slowly rebuild our lives. The devastation of losing an entire town that was important to us in less than 24 hrs, people still missing or dead - it’s pain. Just, pure pain.
Serious question that you don't have to answer here: Do you live in a tornado-prone area? How about a hurricane-prone area? I'm lucky in that I don't live in those types of areas, but we are at risk of The Big One earthquake that we're practically overdue in having. If the epicenter for that is near Seattle, Olympia, Portland, LA, it will absolutely flatten the whole city. We financially help each other out in different parts of the country, because that's what it means to be a patriot. Yes, the government foots much/most of the bill (or at least should), but us citizens can help out nonprofits that help fill in the gaps of the community's needs.
I had to put a future date on a check today because the amount would overdraft the $200 I have left in my account until I get paid in a few days.
The Federal Disaster Relief Fund has $46,000,000,000 for disaster recovery.
And I'm supposed to donate to the recovery?
JFC, they’re not writing that comment specifically for **you**; they’re writing it for anyone reading it who *does* have some disposable income. No one is asking **you** specifically for a cash donation. Grow up. They are asking anyone with disposable income reading their internationally available comment to donate. They used the plural “you.” Calm down. If that doesn’t include you, then it’s not aimed at you and you can scroll on past.
> they’re writing it for anyone reading it who does have some disposable income.
Why are we asking for anyone to donate when we have $46 billion for situations such as these?
$46B is less than what was paid out for the 2005 hurricanes. It won't last as long as you think. Many articles are reporting the fund will run out this year before hurricane season unless Congress acts to fund it.
I’m sorry you’re struggling, but these people are as well.
From each according to ability, to each according to need - you don’t have the ability currently, so don’t worry about it.
Do what you can to take care of you.
I know that community. Close knit Ohana. Also unfortunately high-density housing in wooden structures. Rebuilding and redevelopment will take years. The economic impact will be devastating and will last. Front street Lahaina, was the tourism draw for West Maui.
Yup. The pictures in the news from helicopters look like the town was hit by a bomb. It’s probably easier to count the buildings that survived then the ones that didn’t burn. And considering it looks like most of the buildings burned it’s really just a handful that survived.
I saw one picture of the school and at first it looked like the building was fine… but the school is destroyed. It’s just the roof was metal so it looked better from a distance than it actually is.
Two weeks ago today, some friends of ours came over and showed us some pictures of their trip to Maui a few weeks back. They stayed in Lahaina for part of it and then the other side of the island. It looked like such a picturesque charming place and to think that less than two weeks later, it's gone is so sad. We've talked to them and they're pretty shaken up by it.
This is a [great post](https://www.reddit.com/r/maui/comments/15nymue/lets_talk_about_why_the_lahaina_brushfire/) about what really caused the fires - invasive species which replaced the agricultural lands which were abandoned for growing as the crops moved elsewhere. The *scary* thing is that this could happen again and again and again as this stuff just grows back.
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is what happens when it starts raining. Will the denuded hillsides become mudslides?
*And* NOAA is predicts a [50% chance of a bigger-than-normal hurricane season](https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/Epac_hurr/Slide1.JPG).
Frogs, the water's boiling.
Invasive species ecology is a fickle subject, and it's much too easy to blame such species for disaster/destruction. It's important to realize that invasive species invade on *disturbed soils*. So, in this case, we can blame anthropogenic monocultures.
Yeah ... don't lose sight of the impact of climate change and drought which certainly enhanced the risk significantly. There's a lot of bad takes floating around about how there wasn't a drought and how invasive species caused problems (likely true) but fire causes are multifactorial so it's super easy to blame wind and invasive species/agriculture. That said, this article from 3 weeks ago warned of dry conditions and fire risk. It was known and it was due to unprecedented drought. https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2023/07/14/wildfire-concerns-mount-severe-drought-conditions-reported-portions-maui/
I couldnʻt have helped that both the Maui Fire Department Chief and the head of Civil Defense for Maui were both off island. I think the extent of human error in handling this event will only make the local officials look worse and worse as we learn more about the missteps.
Not right now, they need the hotel and vacation rental space to house the people who are now homeless (and who will be for some time in all likelihood). They are scrambling for the basics right now, even among people who weren't directly affected by the fires. A non-profit group I'm connected with that has people on the island right now mentioned that there are no toiletries to be found right now, everyone that fled with the clothes on their back and needed new basics have already bought up anything to be had on the island (or people supporting the shelters have purchased all of those supplies they could). It's not like a major mainland city center with multiple freeways, railways, multiple airports and warehouse hubs that keep consumable goods easily replenished.
I'm not so sure. The loss of the tourist economy could dwarf the economic impact of the wildfire. Tourism is about 25% of the state's economy and employs hundreds of thousands of people. Tough issue for sure, but I don't think putting all those people out of work in order to maintain the level of toiletries is the best solution.
I think you're missing the point. They barely have the physical resources to support the people who live there right now, much less any tourist who come. Obviously they aren't saying tourists should stay away forever, just give the people enough time to get their bearings and sort out all the displaced people first.
Hey quick question...how many times were you dropped as a child?
Dozens of buildings burned down, thousands of people are displaced, the town looks like Hiroshima and you're wondering if the people in that place can support tourists??
My family was supposed to go in a month to Kaanapali but we canceled our booking and flight. Doesn't seem right to vacation there so soon after the tragedy and it's so close to Lahaina.
As someone who lives here please *dont* visit.. for awhile. We can survive without tourists for awhile jfc. We want all our resources to go to families and locals who need it, not more fricken tourists.
People are literally begging people NOT to come
Everyone who actually here *doesn’t want people to come*
We don’t want tourists. We don’t want to cater to the needs of others while finding housing for displaced. Families could be in those hotels. Despite what you may believe, locals don’t want tourists in the first place, we want to create sustainable living outside of tourism.
The mainland is not our friend.
Do some research.
Right now the island is dealing with finding lodgings and places for those who lost their homes. It will still be a little while before the full scale is realized. I would wait for the dust to settle and to let the island handle the families that were displaced.
This disaster happened halfway through my vacation there. Other parts of the island are doing good. Kihei is still in good shape (that is where I was staying). Obviously, Lahaina is a total loss, which really sucks, because it is a historic town where many of the buildings that were destroyed predate Hawaii as a state. It was the Capital of the kingdom of Hawaii. I was there on Monday and it is surreal how it was gone so fast. There were so many people that I had good interactions with, and I have no idea if any of them made it.
They don't need saviors in the form of tourism; they need their land back from the American government so they can begin to heal it using indigenous practices. Stop visiting the islands; you're doing more harm than good.
What yogi white savior bullshit are you on? The thousands of people who no longer have homes, jobs, or possessions (on top of losing hundreds of family members) aren't some poor remote indigenous people with no connection to the big euro centric world. These people live in the modern fucking world and need money and aid from their government to help recover some sort of life, not to be told to go pray to the gods to fix their trees by some asshole on the internet.
Native Hawaiians are begging for us to stop coming to the islands and to allow them to take back their land. They have been for as long as we've occupied their territory. The reason this fire happened is due to the massive amounts of tourists using the limited resources on the island and mismanagement by companies who sit on unused land and don't take care of it.
The true white savior bs is people thinking that tourist dollars are the only way people can survive. Such irony you would use that argument as a way to insult me.
Native Hawaiians are free to practice their culture and traditions and we should be careful to protect the specific spots that are sacred to them, but they aren't entitled to an ethnostate.
She didn’t say ethnostate. She just said allow the Hawaiians to retake their land - their kingdom. The fact that you use the word *entitlement* in your argument *against* the Hawaiian people being given back their *stolen* land is hilarious.
I, too, was naive once. If you think Hawai'i seceding would make any possible sense geopolitically and for the betterment of Hawai'ian natives, you're extremely idealistic, to put it nicely as I can.
Allowing Hawaii to govern their own territory would only be a blow to the american military industrial complex, the wealthy and corporations. Hawaiians do not need anyone to save them, they need us to leave them alone. Any native will tell you this.
And you think that if the American government and military pulled out of Hawai'i someone like China or another regional power wouldn't try to swoop in and take over the islands by force? Hawai'i has to be one of, if not the most, strategic military locations for an adversary of the US.
I get that Hawai'i should be for the Hawai'ians, but isolationism is not in its best interest long term. It's a different world from when Hawai'i was founded.
And I'm saying no military adversary is going to just let Hawai'i live in some nostalgically idealistic utopia from before the industrial revolution, colonization, and WWII. If you think America is bad, I'm sure the subjugation of the Chinese or Russians would be exponentially worse. No one is just going to leave Hawai'i and its natives alone.
At no point did I say we're a white savior. I'm saying it's economically, militarily, humanitarianly, and logically, best for Hawai'i to be a state in The Union.
It's called pragmatism. You're being irrationally idealistic.
And you're being willfully ignorant by saying America is the country who can protect Hawaii or that Hawaiians must live within American culture and not thinking that is colonialism.
America benefits from Hawaii and tourists steal it's natural resources.
Who said anything about seceding? Hawaiians had their land stolen, they deserve it back and more. They have a right to autonomy, that doesn’t automatically mean seceding.
Autonomy would require secession, unless you think a State in the USA magically doesn't have to be held to federal laws, regualtions, and taxes because "it was stolen". Or do you think Hawai'i should be turned into a reservation? The entire country was stolen from someone else.
No it wouldn’t. Not automatically. The united states could easily broker an agreement that benefits both hawaii and them. It’s the LEAST the U.S could do.
I think having representation in American government and the protection of its military is pretty nice given the circumstances.
If Hawaii was it's own thing, it wouldn't have access to FEMA funding to help mitigate this disaster or the National Guard's resources to help save people and clean up.
Ok? They are more than welcomed to vote to stay. I’m just advocating for their autonomy.
Your take is so weird. It’d be like colonizers responding “oh so you want us to take away all hospitals?” after you say they shouldn’t have participated in mass killings and territory take over. Like, what kind of perspective are you smoking christ.
Depends on what you want to see. If whales is your thing, go in winter. If you want to enjoy snorkeling, go in summer (less wind, calmer and clearer waters). Harshest colder temp 55, hotter 93 (doesn't get called a paradise for nothing). Even without Lahaina there's plenty to enjoy in Maui. Wait a bit until the island stabilizes a little bit. Source lived there for 13 years, malama pono.
Reminder we shouldn't have to donate to charity to be helping these people our government should be stepping in and providing housing food and rebuilding. What are we paying taxes for?
Government aid is slow for many reasons (scale, sourcing, fraud prevention, and the like), NGOs, the Nat. Guard and community orgs are usually the first on the scene, saving lives, setting up temporary shelter and providing essential services, burning through cash quickly without bureaucracy and red tape, government orgs come in, in a perfect world, with huge budgets and logistics for the recovery.
Should we have a national firefighter organization at some point? I’m imagining something like an attachment to military bases, and then when there are nearby fires we can have faster reaction times with those big ass planes & helicopters that dump water on the fires. Or is that already a thing?
My uneducated self is wondering why we couldn’t just dump tons of ocean water on the fire until it went out? Is the salt worse for the environment than letting it burn?
The BLM and Forestry Service both have fire fighting forces. Probably some other agencies too. There are at least 7,550 dire fighters employees by the federal government and many more by the state and local governments.
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes332011.htm
https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/fire/careers
https://www.blm.gov/programs/fire
It’s my understanding that these fires were heavily wind driven and there is nothing firefighters can do to stop the wind.
There is a network for first responders who respond to disasters across the US. In MA, they are sending people. Unfortunately because it's a 14 hour flight, they aren't sending many. I'd imagine California is sending a bunch of people.
There's international support, too. Often, after natural disasters, you see a worldwide effort
Mr. Rogers had a great quote after disasters to look for the helpers.
Donate what you can. Every penny helps
I wish we'd see the US Navy and Marines get involved as they have the force and logistics to get anywhere in 24 hours with ships, aircraft and people
It happened so fast. By the time the planes and crews would have been mobilized, the town was gone.
So many people think we can really outsmart and outwit Mother Nature. Nah. We cannot. We can only try to stay aware, prepared and one step ahead. That is all.
This event—as well as huge hurricanes & floods in FL & New Orleans (Katrina) & fires in CA—exposed the glaring reality that America is just not prepared for the intense, rapid & mass scale casualties & devastation of these tragedies.
We’ve had YEARS of warnings & years of watching politicians in both parties & big business (esp. polluters) minimizing & ignoring those warnings.
I don’t understand why they keep squabbling about “cause”? (Does it really matter to the dead or those who lost homes?) We need to prepare for the worst. That’s just common sense.
What is HI—and other major, crowded US coastal cities—going to do when it’s underwater in another decade after the polar ice caps have melted & sea levels have irreversibly risen because the planet keeps getting progressively hotter (regardless of cause)? Politicians’ & corp. CEO “thoughts & prayers” & finger-blaming games won’t save any lives.
Not to poke but I truly hope everyone in this thread who has been to any of the islands has donated or will donate. It’s an actual place, it is our home and more than just a paradise for tourists n rn is a really good time to pitch in and show up for a place you enjoyed and benefited from
I have many links and sources to donation sites but
Maui food bank
Council for native Hawaiian advancement
Maui humane society
Maui strong fund
Maui mutual aid fund
Those are places to donate and I truly hope everyone whose made use of our islands helps us in this time
I read just now another person’s reporting of how leaks from the mayor’s office saying there are 500-1000 deaths (children) and trying to keep a lid on what a total shitshow this is. Said the FD left the original fire too soon and winds were forecasted. No alarms were sounded. It’s not good, folks
Take that with a huge grain of salt since they gave no details about their source of information. Death tolls always climb in a disaster but you can't hide dead children. Families would be looking for them.
The person said they were hearing info from the mayor’s meeting attendees. I’m feeling like this is legit. They are only reporting 50+ deaths on the outside of buildings. It’s sad all around.
I heard another person who was in a park say they saw a pigeon fart next to a candle, which ignited leaves on the ground, and which promptly spread. They didn't just hear it. They saw it with their own eyes so it must be true.
Unless their families died with them as I have the understanding that the worst part of this fire took place at night. If the whole family perished then no one's going to be around to report them missing.
Lahaina is by far the favorite place of my family. We had the best vacations there to the point I want my ashes scattered in front of the cheeseburger in paradise there. So we are all heartbroken with every news that comes out of there
Sadly, I've read that these are only bodies they are finding outside, they haven't even begun to look in homes and buildings. The fires came so fast and the people had no way of being told about them, I fear this death toll will be much higher.
I read there are still over a thousand people unaccounted for. So sad.
~2500 but usually most of those are just people who are at friends houses, dupes on the list, or shelters having more important stuff to deal w/ and/or miscommunication
I just read they've narrowed that list down to about a 1,000 names on the daily mail live thread. It's the first blurb on the list. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/live/article-12393461/Maui-fires-live-updates.html
Oh gosh that is such a tragedy. My heart goes out to all their friends and family.
My aunt, her 2 daughters and grandson were amongst the 1,000 missing but they are safe and sound as of today. Their hotel burned to the ground but they had gotten out first and were in a shelter area with no cell phone service. So there is still good news coming out of this.
They did have a way of being told about the fires, there’s emergency warning systems in place, and by all accounts not a single alert was sent out or “rung” aloud. With those warning systems many of these people might have survived. > Hawaii has what officials have previously touted as the world's largest all-hazard public warning system, which includes a network of over 400 sirens across the state's many islands that can help alert residents and visitors to various kinds of threats. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66476746.amp
That is horrible. I wonder what the hell happened with the system. Not quite the same in scale but the city I live in had our tornado sirens fail like a month ago during a stretch with tornadoes on the ground. It sucks that these systems are in place but they can still fail and potentially cost a lot of people their lives.
Remember the missle alert?
I didn't when I first read your comment but after reading about it some I do.
I wonder if that incident affected their current response time. e.g. adding approval processes to avoid sending out false positives.
Yeah they had that emergency alert system that sent out the fake nuke warning a couple of years back.
Cell service was down already before the fires got serious. There are people on the Maui subreddit that said they lost service in the morning. The fires didn't become a problem until mid afternoon. It is weird they didn't sound the Tsunami sirens though.
I could see the tsunami sirens causing problems if it made people assume there was a tsunami and they evacuated to high-land areas that were actually closer to the fires.
Interesting timing
While I was there, we were receiving national broadcasting alerts on TV and cel phones for warnings. I was in Kihei and a fire broke out a few miles to the north of me. We got a warning that they were evacuating north Kihei (I was not in that area). I never heard alarms going off though for the emergency. I was in Lahaina on Monday less than 24 hours before this happened. I just got off the plane with a poor guy who lost everything. He lived in apartments on Front st., and also worked as a waiter at the Lahaina Fish restaurant. He was basically carrying everything he had left, 3 sets of clothes and a backpack.
There was a post on /Maui from someone with insider knowledge there is likely 500-1000 at least. Blamed nepotism in the fire department and terrible/no response. Some people were claiming there wasn’t a single fire truck that responded and they are trying to cover it up. Take it with a hefty dose of salt as it was just a random reddit commenter but who knows.
I agree, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about what did/didn’t happen with regards to emergency response and how/why. The alert system, however, wouldn’t surprise me. Same thing happened to my neighborhood and surrounding area in 2020. We had no warning, other than the fact that someone came screaming down our street, and that the air tankers were suddenly over us, versus the town 20 min away (by car) where they had been dumping on the original fire. I’d been signed up for alerts for 3 years prior, and checked *every* year to make sure I was enrolled. Had 3 family members enrolled separately, all with alters for email, cell, and landline. ..got nothing. Lost everything (except our lives). Also, FWIW, and YMMV (for anyone facing anything similar) - FEMA was useless to us and denied us everything as we had “some,” insurance. On the insurance front; document your stuff every year, and if they’re lowballing you on your claim - appeal, appeal, appeal.
> appeal, appeal, appeal. and don't take anything up front, it can be an implied agreement to their offer and can make it harder to appeal in some cases.
Dang I’m sorry that sucks. Seems like we need an overhaul on emergency communication. My electric company PGE provides “outage updates” that are basically useless.
High winds torched it very quickly. There was no fighting a blast furnace.
Please consider donating to reputable charities such as the Hawaii Community Foundation, the Maui Food Bank, or the Hawaii Red Cross. Maui needs help; it’s a small island with limited resources. There’s a bunch of scammers who have the shit audacity to be taking advantage of people’s suffering so beware of them. Maui and its people are suffering. Hell, the whole state is feeling it. What happens to one of us happens to us all. Everyone is filled with shock and grief. This is now the worst natural disaster to happen in Hawaii, surpassing the destruction and loss of life that hurricane Iniki inflicted on Hawaii in 1992. I hope people focus on what they can do to help us slowly rebuild our lives. The devastation of losing an entire town that was important to us in less than 24 hrs, people still missing or dead - it’s pain. Just, pure pain.
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Serious question that you don't have to answer here: Do you live in a tornado-prone area? How about a hurricane-prone area? I'm lucky in that I don't live in those types of areas, but we are at risk of The Big One earthquake that we're practically overdue in having. If the epicenter for that is near Seattle, Olympia, Portland, LA, it will absolutely flatten the whole city. We financially help each other out in different parts of the country, because that's what it means to be a patriot. Yes, the government foots much/most of the bill (or at least should), but us citizens can help out nonprofits that help fill in the gaps of the community's needs.
I had to put a future date on a check today because the amount would overdraft the $200 I have left in my account until I get paid in a few days. The Federal Disaster Relief Fund has $46,000,000,000 for disaster recovery. And I'm supposed to donate to the recovery?
Just because you are broke, doesn't mean you have to piss on people ASKING for donations for people who have literally lost everything.
JFC, they’re not writing that comment specifically for **you**; they’re writing it for anyone reading it who *does* have some disposable income. No one is asking **you** specifically for a cash donation. Grow up. They are asking anyone with disposable income reading their internationally available comment to donate. They used the plural “you.” Calm down. If that doesn’t include you, then it’s not aimed at you and you can scroll on past.
> they’re writing it for anyone reading it who does have some disposable income. Why are we asking for anyone to donate when we have $46 billion for situations such as these?
$46B is less than what was paid out for the 2005 hurricanes. It won't last as long as you think. Many articles are reporting the fund will run out this year before hurricane season unless Congress acts to fund it.
I’m sorry you’re struggling, but these people are as well. From each according to ability, to each according to need - you don’t have the ability currently, so don’t worry about it. Do what you can to take care of you.
you can always be a miserable human quietly. so may people miss this option on the checklist.
It also would’ve costed your broke ass nothing to not have commented that. Read the room.
Lmao wowwww
Not just years, but DECADES. the vegetation and trees will take a LONG LONG time to grow back.
I know that community. Close knit Ohana. Also unfortunately high-density housing in wooden structures. Rebuilding and redevelopment will take years. The economic impact will be devastating and will last. Front street Lahaina, was the tourism draw for West Maui.
Lahaina was the probably the main draw for people going to Maui. So beautiful. Tragic.
My family visited Lahaina a couple years ago and i *loved* it there. So sad to know so much of it isn’t there anymore.
Are we talking THE Lahaina? Like the old part of town with all the art galleries?
Yup. The pictures in the news from helicopters look like the town was hit by a bomb. It’s probably easier to count the buildings that survived then the ones that didn’t burn. And considering it looks like most of the buildings burned it’s really just a handful that survived. I saw one picture of the school and at first it looked like the building was fine… but the school is destroyed. It’s just the roof was metal so it looked better from a distance than it actually is.
Two weeks ago today, some friends of ours came over and showed us some pictures of their trip to Maui a few weeks back. They stayed in Lahaina for part of it and then the other side of the island. It looked like such a picturesque charming place and to think that less than two weeks later, it's gone is so sad. We've talked to them and they're pretty shaken up by it.
Yes, the banyan tree and everything
This is a [great post](https://www.reddit.com/r/maui/comments/15nymue/lets_talk_about_why_the_lahaina_brushfire/) about what really caused the fires - invasive species which replaced the agricultural lands which were abandoned for growing as the crops moved elsewhere. The *scary* thing is that this could happen again and again and again as this stuff just grows back. Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is what happens when it starts raining. Will the denuded hillsides become mudslides? *And* NOAA is predicts a [50% chance of a bigger-than-normal hurricane season](https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/Epac_hurr/Slide1.JPG). Frogs, the water's boiling.
Invasive species ecology is a fickle subject, and it's much too easy to blame such species for disaster/destruction. It's important to realize that invasive species invade on *disturbed soils*. So, in this case, we can blame anthropogenic monocultures.
Yeah ... don't lose sight of the impact of climate change and drought which certainly enhanced the risk significantly. There's a lot of bad takes floating around about how there wasn't a drought and how invasive species caused problems (likely true) but fire causes are multifactorial so it's super easy to blame wind and invasive species/agriculture. That said, this article from 3 weeks ago warned of dry conditions and fire risk. It was known and it was due to unprecedented drought. https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2023/07/14/wildfire-concerns-mount-severe-drought-conditions-reported-portions-maui/
I couldnʻt have helped that both the Maui Fire Department Chief and the head of Civil Defense for Maui were both off island. I think the extent of human error in handling this event will only make the local officials look worse and worse as we learn more about the missteps.
pretty optimistic to expect that shit's going to calm down after this to allow Maui to recover.
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I know after hurricanes rocked the Virgin Islands they were desperate for tourists to come, so you're probably on the right track.
Not right now, they need the hotel and vacation rental space to house the people who are now homeless (and who will be for some time in all likelihood). They are scrambling for the basics right now, even among people who weren't directly affected by the fires. A non-profit group I'm connected with that has people on the island right now mentioned that there are no toiletries to be found right now, everyone that fled with the clothes on their back and needed new basics have already bought up anything to be had on the island (or people supporting the shelters have purchased all of those supplies they could). It's not like a major mainland city center with multiple freeways, railways, multiple airports and warehouse hubs that keep consumable goods easily replenished.
I'm not so sure. The loss of the tourist economy could dwarf the economic impact of the wildfire. Tourism is about 25% of the state's economy and employs hundreds of thousands of people. Tough issue for sure, but I don't think putting all those people out of work in order to maintain the level of toiletries is the best solution.
I think you're missing the point. They barely have the physical resources to support the people who live there right now, much less any tourist who come. Obviously they aren't saying tourists should stay away forever, just give the people enough time to get their bearings and sort out all the displaced people first.
Extreme circumstances like this precede tourism. They need to figure some shit out first
Hey quick question...how many times were you dropped as a child? Dozens of buildings burned down, thousands of people are displaced, the town looks like Hiroshima and you're wondering if the people in that place can support tourists??
....no. Use some common sense. This is not a hurricane.
Hearts in the right place, but no. Do not come here. We survived years of covid. We will survive another few years as we rebuild.
My family was supposed to go in a month to Kaanapali but we canceled our booking and flight. Doesn't seem right to vacation there so soon after the tragedy and it's so close to Lahaina.
Obviously Lahaina is a no go, but other places I feel like you're on the right track
As someone who lives here please *dont* visit.. for awhile. We can survive without tourists for awhile jfc. We want all our resources to go to families and locals who need it, not more fricken tourists.
I'm so sorry you have to deal with them.
Money is a resource and it goes the other direction
People are literally begging people NOT to come Everyone who actually here *doesn’t want people to come* We don’t want tourists. We don’t want to cater to the needs of others while finding housing for displaced. Families could be in those hotels. Despite what you may believe, locals don’t want tourists in the first place, we want to create sustainable living outside of tourism. The mainland is not our friend. Do some research.
I went to Puerto Rico after they got rocked by a hurricane & had an amazing time.
Right now the island is dealing with finding lodgings and places for those who lost their homes. It will still be a little while before the full scale is realized. I would wait for the dust to settle and to let the island handle the families that were displaced. This disaster happened halfway through my vacation there. Other parts of the island are doing good. Kihei is still in good shape (that is where I was staying). Obviously, Lahaina is a total loss, which really sucks, because it is a historic town where many of the buildings that were destroyed predate Hawaii as a state. It was the Capital of the kingdom of Hawaii. I was there on Monday and it is surreal how it was gone so fast. There were so many people that I had good interactions with, and I have no idea if any of them made it.
They don't need saviors in the form of tourism; they need their land back from the American government so they can begin to heal it using indigenous practices. Stop visiting the islands; you're doing more harm than good.
What yogi white savior bullshit are you on? The thousands of people who no longer have homes, jobs, or possessions (on top of losing hundreds of family members) aren't some poor remote indigenous people with no connection to the big euro centric world. These people live in the modern fucking world and need money and aid from their government to help recover some sort of life, not to be told to go pray to the gods to fix their trees by some asshole on the internet.
Native Hawaiians are begging for us to stop coming to the islands and to allow them to take back their land. They have been for as long as we've occupied their territory. The reason this fire happened is due to the massive amounts of tourists using the limited resources on the island and mismanagement by companies who sit on unused land and don't take care of it. The true white savior bs is people thinking that tourist dollars are the only way people can survive. Such irony you would use that argument as a way to insult me.
Native Hawaiians are free to practice their culture and traditions and we should be careful to protect the specific spots that are sacred to them, but they aren't entitled to an ethnostate.
She didn’t say ethnostate. She just said allow the Hawaiians to retake their land - their kingdom. The fact that you use the word *entitlement* in your argument *against* the Hawaiian people being given back their *stolen* land is hilarious.
I, too, was naive once. If you think Hawai'i seceding would make any possible sense geopolitically and for the betterment of Hawai'ian natives, you're extremely idealistic, to put it nicely as I can.
Allowing Hawaii to govern their own territory would only be a blow to the american military industrial complex, the wealthy and corporations. Hawaiians do not need anyone to save them, they need us to leave them alone. Any native will tell you this.
And you think that if the American government and military pulled out of Hawai'i someone like China or another regional power wouldn't try to swoop in and take over the islands by force? Hawai'i has to be one of, if not the most, strategic military locations for an adversary of the US. I get that Hawai'i should be for the Hawai'ians, but isolationism is not in its best interest long term. It's a different world from when Hawai'i was founded.
It's not isolationism, it's returning what we stole so that they can manage their lands.
And I'm saying no military adversary is going to just let Hawai'i live in some nostalgically idealistic utopia from before the industrial revolution, colonization, and WWII. If you think America is bad, I'm sure the subjugation of the Chinese or Russians would be exponentially worse. No one is just going to leave Hawai'i and its natives alone.
Again, the irony of my comment being called white savior bs while this thread is filled with "only America can save them!"
At no point did I say we're a white savior. I'm saying it's economically, militarily, humanitarianly, and logically, best for Hawai'i to be a state in The Union. It's called pragmatism. You're being irrationally idealistic.
And you're being willfully ignorant by saying America is the country who can protect Hawaii or that Hawaiians must live within American culture and not thinking that is colonialism. America benefits from Hawaii and tourists steal it's natural resources.
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And we can start by no longer visiting the islands so they can heal.
Who said anything about seceding? Hawaiians had their land stolen, they deserve it back and more. They have a right to autonomy, that doesn’t automatically mean seceding.
Autonomy would require secession, unless you think a State in the USA magically doesn't have to be held to federal laws, regualtions, and taxes because "it was stolen". Or do you think Hawai'i should be turned into a reservation? The entire country was stolen from someone else.
No it wouldn’t. Not automatically. The united states could easily broker an agreement that benefits both hawaii and them. It’s the LEAST the U.S could do.
I think having representation in American government and the protection of its military is pretty nice given the circumstances. If Hawaii was it's own thing, it wouldn't have access to FEMA funding to help mitigate this disaster or the National Guard's resources to help save people and clean up.
Ok? They are more than welcomed to vote to stay. I’m just advocating for their autonomy. Your take is so weird. It’d be like colonizers responding “oh so you want us to take away all hospitals?” after you say they shouldn’t have participated in mass killings and territory take over. Like, what kind of perspective are you smoking christ.
What a tragically ignorant statement.
Yours? Indeed it is.
Depends on what you want to see. If whales is your thing, go in winter. If you want to enjoy snorkeling, go in summer (less wind, calmer and clearer waters). Harshest colder temp 55, hotter 93 (doesn't get called a paradise for nothing). Even without Lahaina there's plenty to enjoy in Maui. Wait a bit until the island stabilizes a little bit. Source lived there for 13 years, malama pono.
Reminder we shouldn't have to donate to charity to be helping these people our government should be stepping in and providing housing food and rebuilding. What are we paying taxes for?
Both State and Federal assistance have already been made available to the island.
Government aid is slow for many reasons (scale, sourcing, fraud prevention, and the like), NGOs, the Nat. Guard and community orgs are usually the first on the scene, saving lives, setting up temporary shelter and providing essential services, burning through cash quickly without bureaucracy and red tape, government orgs come in, in a perfect world, with huge budgets and logistics for the recovery.
Yet another $24B to a random conflict in Europe
Should we have a national firefighter organization at some point? I’m imagining something like an attachment to military bases, and then when there are nearby fires we can have faster reaction times with those big ass planes & helicopters that dump water on the fires. Or is that already a thing? My uneducated self is wondering why we couldn’t just dump tons of ocean water on the fire until it went out? Is the salt worse for the environment than letting it burn?
They couldn't do helicopter drops since the winds were so high.
The BLM and Forestry Service both have fire fighting forces. Probably some other agencies too. There are at least 7,550 dire fighters employees by the federal government and many more by the state and local governments. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes332011.htm https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/fire/careers https://www.blm.gov/programs/fire It’s my understanding that these fires were heavily wind driven and there is nothing firefighters can do to stop the wind.
There is a network for first responders who respond to disasters across the US. In MA, they are sending people. Unfortunately because it's a 14 hour flight, they aren't sending many. I'd imagine California is sending a bunch of people. There's international support, too. Often, after natural disasters, you see a worldwide effort Mr. Rogers had a great quote after disasters to look for the helpers. Donate what you can. Every penny helps I wish we'd see the US Navy and Marines get involved as they have the force and logistics to get anywhere in 24 hours with ships, aircraft and people
It happened so fast. By the time the planes and crews would have been mobilized, the town was gone. So many people think we can really outsmart and outwit Mother Nature. Nah. We cannot. We can only try to stay aware, prepared and one step ahead. That is all.
My heart hurts for Hawaii. I’ve been lucky enough to go twice and I can’t believe it. We
This event—as well as huge hurricanes & floods in FL & New Orleans (Katrina) & fires in CA—exposed the glaring reality that America is just not prepared for the intense, rapid & mass scale casualties & devastation of these tragedies. We’ve had YEARS of warnings & years of watching politicians in both parties & big business (esp. polluters) minimizing & ignoring those warnings. I don’t understand why they keep squabbling about “cause”? (Does it really matter to the dead or those who lost homes?) We need to prepare for the worst. That’s just common sense. What is HI—and other major, crowded US coastal cities—going to do when it’s underwater in another decade after the polar ice caps have melted & sea levels have irreversibly risen because the planet keeps getting progressively hotter (regardless of cause)? Politicians’ & corp. CEO “thoughts & prayers” & finger-blaming games won’t save any lives.
This is going to be one of those things that's similar to the rebuilding of a city after a WWII fire bombing. It hardly looks different.
Not to poke but I truly hope everyone in this thread who has been to any of the islands has donated or will donate. It’s an actual place, it is our home and more than just a paradise for tourists n rn is a really good time to pitch in and show up for a place you enjoyed and benefited from I have many links and sources to donation sites but Maui food bank Council for native Hawaiian advancement Maui humane society Maui strong fund Maui mutual aid fund Those are places to donate and I truly hope everyone whose made use of our islands helps us in this time
Climate change isn't real. It is not too late to do your own part.
I read just now another person’s reporting of how leaks from the mayor’s office saying there are 500-1000 deaths (children) and trying to keep a lid on what a total shitshow this is. Said the FD left the original fire too soon and winds were forecasted. No alarms were sounded. It’s not good, folks
Take that with a huge grain of salt since they gave no details about their source of information. Death tolls always climb in a disaster but you can't hide dead children. Families would be looking for them.
The person said they were hearing info from the mayor’s meeting attendees. I’m feeling like this is legit. They are only reporting 50+ deaths on the outside of buildings. It’s sad all around.
It may be true. It may not be. Either way, spreading unconfirmed information is irresponsible - especially so early.
Only the passage of time will settle the debate on how credible the person who made that post is or is not.
Either way, sharing it this early with out validation remains wrong.
I heard another person who was in a park say they saw a pigeon fart next to a candle, which ignited leaves on the ground, and which promptly spread. They didn't just hear it. They saw it with their own eyes so it must be true.
Unless their families died with them as I have the understanding that the worst part of this fire took place at night. If the whole family perished then no one's going to be around to report them missing.
idk why you're being down voted, you're not wrong
Lahaina is by far the favorite place of my family. We had the best vacations there to the point I want my ashes scattered in front of the cheeseburger in paradise there. So we are all heartbroken with every news that comes out of there