Fires on Maui and in Lahaina

[Kapolei]

I just think the off topic conversation is being prolonged by continuing to discuss this person. I haven’t really read what the debate is about. But I don’t care. Call the person out if you need to. But please stop talking about an obnoxious poster. Move on.

 

[h2oflyboy]

I

Why would Westin or United cancel your trip?

Checking further down the thread - the Westin did cancel

 

[h2oflyboy]

Maui has been my go to for the past 2 years and I have been 1/2 a dozen times. My home resort is the Maui Bay Villa - and I like to call all of the people there ohana. I pray for them and their families. If I had a reservation there, I would cancel it. There is no reason to go there right now to become someone who takes from their limited supplies. Essential travel only till the end of September and maybe even till December if on the Lahaina and northwestern side.

 

[artringwald]

Here's how some of the owners of destroyed businesses are trying to help.

Lost in the Maui fire: Hawaii's oldest inn and its restaurant

In the early part of the past century, whalers who docked their ships in Lahaina, in western Maui, would drink at the saloon in the Pioneer Inn. For decades, the Inn's Grill and Bar was a spot for locals to gather and gossip over breakfast. And in recent years, diners could eat poke and sip...

news.yahoo.com

 

[heitmullerj02]

Heard of friends, evacuated from Maui with just clothes on their back and a cell phone. No ID to get to mainland. Safe in Oahu now, waiting to see if they can return to get their stuff. Kaanapali has no power, I canceled my trip next year. Does not seem appropriate to vacation while so many will be struggling.

 

[slip]

Heard of friends, evacuated from Maui with just clothes on their back and a cell phone. No ID to get to mainland. Safe in Oahu now, waiting to see if they can return to get their stuff. Kaanapali has no power, I canceled my trip next year. Does not seem appropriate to vacation while so many will be struggling.

I heard part of Kaanapali does have power now. I can see some lights on Maui from here also tonight. I don't known what sections though.

There is no internet but a couple people with Statlink opened their accounts up for others to use.

 

[TravelJoy]

Maui has been my go to for the past 2 years and I have been 1/2 a dozen times. My home resort is the Maui Bay Villa - and I like to call all of the people there ohana. I pray for them and their families. If I had a reservation there, I would cancel it. There is no reason to go there right now to become someone who takes from their limited supplies. Essential travel only till the end of September and maybe even till December if on the Lahaina and northwestern side.

Absolutely correct, compounding the damage to infrastructure, the remote location also is troublesome, happens all the time with disasters. This is a 3-6 month ordeal just to get infrastructure half way done, and then the rebuild can be in focus.

 

[Kapolei]

During the most shut down time of COVID, MKO stayed open with a skeleton crew and most amenities unavailable. Something similar may happen on Maui.

 

[er57]

The rebuilding will give Hawaiians an opportunity to rebuild better. It won't be an all-at-once organized rebuild because many entities and individuals own different properties, and all have (or don't have) their own insurance. It will take time to scrape off the damage, and landfills will have to be able to accept the waste. Then plans will have to be drawn, and many, many barges of building materials will have to be ordered, loaded and shipped. Laborers will have to be hired, and housed.

This will be a patchwork of construction. I wouldn't expect any semblance of 'normalcy' for 10 years of so.

The above said after my crystal ball rolled out of the truck at some grimy truck stop diesel fuel island and cracked to smithereens. Take it with however many grains of salt you wish.

Agree. Hurricane Micheal survivor here. Our area just now starting to get back to "normal" 5 years in. Some areas where the eye hit are just starting to rebuild (Tyndall AFB). It takes a crazy long time to recover from a biblical disater like this. Lahaina will never be the same is is off line for a while.

 

[Luanne]

I just think the off topic conversation is being prolonged by continuing to discuss this person. I haven’t really read what the debate is about. But I don’t care. Call the person out if you need to. But please stop talking about an obnoxious poster. Move on.

Just put him on ignore. I have and it's made my life a lot happier.

 

[TUGBrian]

keep it on topic, only warning

 

[davidvel]

Heard of friends, evacuated from Maui with just clothes on their back and a cell phone. No ID to get to mainland. Safe in Oahu now, waiting to see if they can return to get their stuff. Kaanapali has no power, I canceled my trip next year. Does not seem appropriate to vacation while so many will be struggling.

While I am sure they want to get back to get their belongings, please let your friends know that they can get to mainland without ID (just like they did to Oahu). It will take verification of identity by TSA, but they can and will allow people to travel without ID. It happens all the time when people lose purses, wallets, etc while traveling.

 

[StaceyM]

While I am sure they want to get back to get their belongings, please let your friends know that they can get to mainland without ID (just like they did to Oahu). It will take verification of identity by TSA, but they can and will allow people to travel without ID. It happens all the time when people lose purses, wallets, etc while traveling.

Can confirm. My experience is several years ago, but they will ask you questions from a consumer database similar to your credit card or a background check. Things like "Which street have you lived on?" with a list of four streets and "What is the approximate age of this person?" (the person will be a relative): 30-40, 40-50 etc. If you can pull up anything on your phone (bills, ID photos, etc) to corroborate your identity it goes faster.

ETA: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/frequent...fication-can-i-still-proceed-through-security

 

[StaceyM]

How many displaced, homeless people exist on an island with thousands of short-term rental options? That's why.

The press conference less than 36 hours into the disaster, the governor said they were in the process of looking at that. There is a slight problem with the 3rd Amendment that the government needs permission to occupy private property. If people are arguably housed in a public shelter, there isn't an immediate life-or-death defense to seizing private property. Sure the national guard could forcibly open up empty rooms with AK-47s in hand, but the backlash would be insane.

And they need sufficient staffing to keep the property from creating an unsafe environment and/or incurring damages from flooding toilets or people cooking on portable electric burners in their rooms. Do they even have electricity and computer service to make keycards to unlock the doors? Water for people to drink safely and flush toilets?

Moving people into a hotel or condo without basic permission, security and sanitation is asking for more problems than keeping them at a public shelter for a week.

The wheels are turning, the red tape will be minimized due to circumstances, but there are things that are just going to take more than a couple of days. Period.

 

[aroundtheworld76]

While I am sure they want to get back to get their belongings, please let your friends know that they can get to mainland without ID (just like they did to Oahu). It will take verification of identity by TSA, but they can and will allow people to travel without ID. It happens all the time when people lose purses, wallets, etc while traveling.

Indeed. This seems to be as good a place as any to remind folks who haven't yet been affected by a disaster to scan important documents to a cloud service and do a photo inventory of your house, including every closet and drawer that you can show to your insurance later.

 

[HereAndThere]

Here's another angle on the recovery. They can't do anything until searches are completed. Some dogs from here left to assist with the FEMA search. This alone is physically and mentally exhausting for both humans and dogs. It's a slow, hard process. This is going to take baby steps, not leaps. People just don't brush off these losses.

 

[ScoopKona]

And they need sufficient staffing to keep the property from creating an unsafe environment and/or incurring damages from flooding toilets or people cooking on portable electric burners in their rooms. Do they even have electricity and computer service to make keycards to unlock the doors? Water for people to drink safely and flush toilets?

It's better than sleeping rough outside with no shelter at all, wouldn't you agree? Or sleeping in a tent.

The water problem is going to be a problem regardless. The solution is getting potable water to the people. Again, all it takes is a big ship with a massive RO system. We have dozens of these in the area. Navy ships don't buy fresh water -- they make it from sea water. Anchor one as close as possible and turn the taps on "full blast." Yes, we'll burn through a great many filters and membranes. So? It puts potable water in front of the people who need it.

We have everything we need to stop this disaster from becoming worse -- it's just a question of moving the equipment to where it is needed. There's only one entity big enough for this job. Once the survivors' basic needs are met, THEN it can go to the state and county to decide what to do next.

 

[WinniWoman]

Sorry if I missed this in the posts somewhere - I haven’t read them all. But has it been released how this fire actually got started?

I know about the winds and dry conditions, but haven’t heard how this fire was ignited or if they even know yet.

 

[Luanne]

Sorry if I missed this in the posts somewhere - I haven’t read them all. But has it been released how this fire actually got started?

I know about the winds and dry conditions, but haven’t heard how this fire was ignited or if they even know yet.

No cause for the fire has been determined, but experts said one possibility was that active power lines that fell in high winds ignited the wildfire that ultimately spread to Lahaina, a coastal town of 13,000 in western Maui that was leveled.

 

[TravelTime]

These are interesting articles comparing the situations in Maui and Rhodes (Greece) within the past month as well as Paradise, CA, and Mati (Greece) in 2018. I know it is behind a fire wall. This is an opinion piece but the author is an expert on natural disasters and has been involved with emergency preparedness and crisis management. He also wrote an article on the Paradise fire. It seems like Maui and many parts of the USA and the world need better systems to save lives and property. I always find it interesting to compare lessons learned.

It is just sad when there are things that could have been done. It is interesting that many of the solutions are obvious but not implemented. One of his main points is there are lessons learned from all the previous fires around the world but people do not seem to be applying those lessons.

Opinion | The Fire in Maui and the Lesson of Greece

Athens learned the lessons of a 2018 blaze that killed 104. In Rhodes last month, only one person died.

www.wsj.com

…Last month several fires broke out in Rhodes, and there were big differences in crisis management. In Maui, about 11,000 tourists were evacuated, mainly from two locales. In Rhodes, between 20,000 and 30,000 people were evacuated from 12 locales in a single day. The fires in Maui burned for two days, in Rhodes for about eight. In Rhodes about 1,500 were evacuated from beaches, in Maui fewer than 20. In Rhodes, local residents, the Red Cross and Greek Civil Protection delivered humanitarian supplies to evacuees. In Maui some survivors reportedly had to buy their own mattresses and pillows.

In Rhodes there was only one casualty, a volunteer firefighter. There were evacuation orders from the Greek emergency communications service, known as 112. In addition to being a single emergency number like 911, the 112 service encompasses a national integrated public alert and warning system, which provides emergency information to the public through mobile and landline telephones. The service doesn’t require an app or subscription; the messages go to all cellphones in an area at risk, in Greek and in English….

…Preventing or mitigating such disasters will require advanced technology to detect fires (some already in trials in California), improved emergency alert systems with fast projections of fire spread and intensity, better first responses, forest management that adapts to changing weather conditions, and analysis of the lessons from other catastrophic fires around the world.

Opinion | Lessons From the Paradise Fire

There’s more to be done to prepare for natural disasters in at-risk areas.

www.wsj.com

…Wildfires will become more intense and frequent in the coming decades because of climate change, overdevelopment and poor forest management. Mediterranean climates will be especially vulnerable. Governments and utilities must find the money to bury electricity wires in fire-prone areas. Officials must also prepare people to evacuate their homes and workplaces when—not if—life-threatening weather or fire approaches. In at-risk areas, everyone needs to adopt the assumption that such a deadly natural disaster could happen tomorrow and that they might need to leave immediately.

 

[MikeinSoCal]

 

[klpca]

From Instagram:

 

[sponger76]

For example, there was a man with about 10 scraggly parrots (which are an invasive species to Hawaii) standing on a street corner in Lahaina and people were lined up to take photos with the birds... I've seen that in tons of places, from Pier 49 in San Francisco, to Mexican resorts, to a temple in Bali. There's nothing Hawaiian about a souvenir photo of a South American parrot on your shoulder; the Lahaina waterfront wasn't even in the photos. It's just a tourist trap cliche.

That's not just on Maui. I've seen the pictures with a parrot thing on O'ahu, Kaua'i and the Big Island as well.

 

[WaikikiFirst]

how this fire was ignited or if they even know

Without actual video evidence, that will be a long, touchy piece of "knowledge" subject to negotiation of interpretation. 3 comments:
1. there are news reports of an eyewitness to one of the Upcountry fires igniting from downed power line
2. a friend of a friend was at the Hyatt. They were told very early on that loss of electricity started with a "downed power line" though you surely can ask how the people at the Hyatt knew that. (btw, they said they drove to the airport at the crack of dawn using the West Loop, along with 100 or more other cars in what basically turned into a 3 hr procession. And some here refused to believe that anyone would quickly think "Hey, let's use the West Loop" and actually do it)
3. Hawaii Electric stock is down almost 50% since the Lahaina fire started. Almost 50%. Those with the resources to get the latest info and the "desire" to bet on it one way or the other clearly think it was a "downed power line".

The "fog of war" and all that. I swear I have read conflicting reports of the actual time-lines, but ... I'll let others deal with it.

 

[JulieAB]

Do you think it's still ok to go to other islands right now? I'm not sure if the entire state is down on tourists right now. We have a layover at OGG. I looked for a different flight, but the times are wildly different. I wonder if the airline will automatically change it?