As of this writing, the somber reality stands with 115 confirmed dead and 388 individuals unaccounted for, many of whom are elderly and children. Thousands of homes and businesses have been destroyed and hundreds of families have been displaced on an island with limited ability to meet the needs.

My wife and I lived in Kihei on Maui from 2016 to 2020, and we shared many wonderful Lahaina memories with friends and family. This priceless icon of Hawaii life and culture is a tragic loss on many levels. While living on Maui, we witnessed firsthand how inept the ruling class in Hawaii has become.

The Lahaina wildfire has left an indelible mark, resonating deeply with my experiences during my time on Maui. I have watched the situation very carefully from the beginning. Though information continues to surface, I have done my best to assemble the an objective and accurate collection of the facts below.

Given the context of similar fires during my time there, the fact that the government ignored clear warnings from the July 2021 report titled, “Report on Wildfire Prevention and Cost Recovery on Maui¹,” detailing the extreme fire risk posed by the dry invasive grass on the hillside above Lahaina, is profoundly disheartening.

In a region accustomed to fierce winds, the glaring lack of a protocol to shut down the power grid during hurricane-force winds is puzzling. The grid around Lahaina is rated for 60 mile per hour winds. Typically, if winds approach that limit, the system would be shut down to prevent the swaying power lines from touching and arching causing transformers to blow and shower sparks down onto the ground. The fire risk exists in high winds even if weather-beaten power poles remain upright. Reluctance to de-energize the grid, driven by concerns for water pumps critical to fire suppression efforts, underscores a deficiency in comprehensive planning.

Lahain’s water supply comes from ground water pumped from wells and surface water from irrigation ditches fed by mountain rainfall.

Hawaii’s agricultural heritage includes an amazing water management system dating back to 1878. After a fire earlier that day on August 8^th depleted the town’s reservoir, a request to divert more water to the city’s water supply to aid in fire suppression was sent to Deputy Director M. Kaleo Manuel at Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, CWRM². Despite the unfolding emergency the request was rejected citing concerns for downstream users. The request was finally approved at 6:00 p.m. but it was already too late.

One thing that people need to understand especially those from far away is that there’s been a great deal of water conflict on Maui for many years,” Green said. “It’s important that we’re honest about this. People have been fighting against the release of water to fight fires. I’ll leave that to you to explore.

Hawaiian politics is a complicated mix of efforts to preserve the Hawaiian culture while being dependent on tourism and inflows of money brought by mainlanders seeking to live their dream of experiencing Hawaiian life like we did. While our experience with locals was overwhelmingly positive, there is an undertow of frustration amongst Hawaiians who can barely afford to live in their ancestral home.

Though it seems unbelievable that someone would reject a request for water to fight fires due to politics, this is just one of the aggravating factors of that day.

Furthermore, the well pumps did not have a reliable power source such as underground power, and there has been no mention of emergency generators for this critical component in the West Maui infrastructure.

Ensuring the reliability of the Lahaina water supply was one of the primary roles of government, yet they failed due to political bickering and incompetence.

The wind driven fire was so aggressive that fire crews could have significantly changed the outcome even if they had unlimited water. Fire crews reported multiple structures catching fire around them while they were fighting a blaze on a particular structure.

However, imagine for a moment how it would feel to be risking your life battling an inferno as a firefighter. Your water source runs dry, and your fire hose falls limp while you’re staring at a wall of flames engulfing your city. You’ve been doing everything you could all day to save whoever and whatever you could while seeing horrific suffering. Later you discover you ran out of water due to politics.

How do you process that?

As fire crews fought bravely however, the water system depressurized, rendering them defenseless. They were quickly overwhelmed and had to flee for their lives as they attempted to save anyone they could on the way out of the area.

One trapped fire crew was unable to drive their truck out due to blocked exits. They hunkered down during the inferno as their apparatus (fire truck) began to cook with them still inside. When the windshield began to bubble and the interior started smoking, they bailed out and took cover on the downwind side of their truck. Their chief attempted to text his family his final goodbye, but the message failed to send on the broken cellular network.

A fellow firefighter commandeered a police cruiser and navigated through the fire to their location. They all crammed into the SUV and pulled one of their unconscious team members into the vehicle on top of them as they drove around the obstacles to escape.

Many people have wondered how a city perched on the edge of the ocean could run out of water for firefighting. A fire crew would never resort to sea water unless in a dire emergency because the salt water is very hard on equipment.

While this certainly qualified as “dire” there was no practical way for fire crews to leave their assigned areas, navigate through traffic and blocked roadways to the shoreline or boat ramp to harvest sea water, then return to the fight. The fire advanced quickly and the time needed to fill the truck and return would have taken that crew out of the fight completely.

Adding to the tragedy was a profound communication breakdown. Instead of activating warning sirens, a policy explicitly outlined for use during wildfires, the government’s decision left many bewildered. The choice to rely on text message warnings turned into a grave misjudgment, as the weather had already disrupted cellular coverage, leaving many unaware of the imminent danger until it was too late to escape.

Hawaiʻi has the largest single integrated Outdoor Siren Warning System for Public Safety in the world. The all-hazard siren system can be used for a variety of both natural and human-caused events; including tsunamis, hurricanes, dam breaches, flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, terrorist threats, hazardous material incidents, and more.

Maui’s Emergency Management Chief, Herman Andaya, resigned after his public announcement of their choice to not activate the sirens because of concerns that people would assume it was a tsunami warning and head up hill toward the fire danger. He doubled down on the choice stating he did not regret the decision.

Let that sink in…Maui government officials believed people were not smart enough to understand the risks when they step outside, and massive billows of black smoke and flaming embers were blowing at them at 60-80 miles per hour.

The crisis witnessed on the ground accentuates another layer of the government’s inadequacy. Absent a well-structured incident command system, confusion and indecision became unfortunate hallmarks of the emergency response. In the face of such a challenge, even the most well-intentioned efforts faltered without a coordinated approach.

For example, police blocked roads out of Lahaina and routed people toward Front Steet due to downed power lines. While they were “following orders” they didn’t realize they were trapping dozens of people in the path of an inferno. Survivors drove through yards and debris filled side roads with flames raging around them to escape. Others were forced to jump into the ocean to get away from the intense heat as the wind hurled flaming debris at them in the water.

Perhaps the most sobering lesson here is the that misplaced faith in government intervention can lead to tragedy. The government’s responsibility to its citizens demands an ability to anticipate worst-case scenarios, especially in a region that’s no stranger to such crises. However, even the best prepared agency isn’t typically geared for compounding effects of multiple “worst case” situations at the same time.

Unfortunately, following the directions of incompetent people can get us killed, so it is essential that we have our own disaster preparation plan worked out with our family before a disaster comes to our door.

Essential preparedness steps include everyone in the family knowing multiple routes to safety, a durable thumb drive and/or packet with copies of all essential documents and emergency bags packed with the basics for each member of the family. Most of all, we must listen to our instinct when it is telling us we are in danger and need to move.

In the aftermath of horrible things, it’s natural to try to understand what happened. We try to fit the pieces we know together into something that makes sense. These days it’s easy for people to share these half-baked or ignorant theories on social media where other people, also seeking understanding, latch onto the ideas and share them with others.

Times of stress call for wisdom. We must develop a habit of discerning between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact, and we should never get ahead of the evidence.

In this case popular theories included directed energy weapons and intentional premeditated fires set to facilitate a land grab and the creation of a 15-minute city or some other nonsense. While I acknowledge there are a lot of things going on behind the curtain and multiple agendas are pulling the country is dangerous directions, wandering off into fantasies only servs to divert focus from the true cause of this suffering: Government’s inability to execute effective disaster management.

This brings us to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. If we see content about something we know a lot about then notice the author is ignorant or inaccurate about the topic, we typically move on. However, when that same content source shares something, about which we’re less familiar, we choose to believe them, especially if their message fits our point of view.

If someone proves unreliable in one area, how can we trust them on any topic?

In the aftermath of the Lahaina catastrophe, the message is clear: competent governance, personal preparedness, and a cautious approach to information are integral to protecting ourselves and our loved ones from future tragedies.

I hope we all learn from this horrific event and take personal responsibility seriously moving forward.

We are our own first responders.

1 Wildfire Prevention and Cost Recovery on Maui, July 2021: https://gojt.us/mwp21

2 Request was made to divert water to fight Maui fire: https://gojt.us/hih2o

3 Hawaii All-Hazard Statewide Outdoor Warning Siren System: https://gojt.us/hisiren