Lahaina-Who Was In Charge on 8/8?
This post will be brief, and hopefully my last Lahaina post
The Mayor of Maui, does not know who was in charge of Mauis Emergency Center on August 8, over 3 weeks after the event? Seriously? Frankly, I thought he was but if not who was he getting updates from?
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Three weeks after a wall of fire claimed at least 115 lives and turned historic Lahaina to ash, Maui County’s highest-ranking official said he didn’t know who was calling the shots at the county’s Emergency Management Center the day the town burned.
“I’m not sure who was in charge. (Former Maui Emergency Management Administrator) Herman Andaya was still in charge. He just wasn’t present. He was in contact with his team. I guess by phone. I don’t know exactly how,”
Bissen said….
When questioned about his whereabouts that day, Bissen said he attended a virtual meeting with other state and county leaders that morning to discuss the multiple brush fires that had broken out on Hawaii Island and Maui. But he wouldn’t tell reporters where he was the rest of the day.
“I don’t have that. I don’t have that for you,” he said.
Update-Adding this exchange with Bissen
Mayor Bissen 8/8 1:30 pm
Starts off talking about Kula fire, at the time Lahaina fire was contained but Kula was not. Seemed most of concern was Kula where they had 29 fire fighters (all of Maui has only 65)
He then gave an interview at 6 pm with a local news station which exposed how clueless we was about the situation there.
He said later the Engine they relied on to give an update did not report so they were waiting on a 7 pm update. That should have been a clue right there something was wrong.
The people on Maui should be demanding his resignation. He is clearly unfit for the job. But thats only my opinion.
It’s been 20 years since my last trip to Hawaii and I have no plans to visit Maui again. However, even if I had the money and somewhere to park my dogs for a couple of weeks, I would be concerned visiting a place with such an incompetent government and a clearly ill equipped and under staffed Fire Department (no disrespect for the firefighters, they make do with what they have).
I believe that there are shenanigans going on with communications in these situations. I believe others are nefariously at the centre of purposeful miscommunications. Officials standing down, absent or just inept seems more frequent and obvious in many of these horrors. David Hawkins of Reverse CSI thinks it is a much larger operation. None of this makes any sense, is absolutely inexplicable how all of these failures could have happened coupled with zero accountability after the fact. They think they will just wear the people out, wait them out. The island invader billionaires sure are quiet. Are they being told to be?