Maui’s top emergency official is out after failing to sound sirens as fires approached
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Maui’s top emergency management official resigned Thursday, one day
Aug. 17, 202304:47
“Given the gravity of the crisis we are facing, my team and I will be placing someone in this key position as quickly as possible and I look forward to making that announcement soon,” Bissen said.
A wildfire devastated the historic West Maui town of Lahaina on Aug. 8, killing more than 100 people and destroying thousands of buildings, many of them residential.
Residents have described fleeing the area with little more than what they could grab — and with no way to receive emergency alerts sent to mobile devices, because the power had been out for many since early that morning.
Andaya said he decided not to sound the sirens as the fire approached, as he feared coastal residents would have fled inland, toward the flames.
“The public is trained to seek higher ground in the event that the siren is sounded,” he said, noting that sirens are used primarily for tsunamis.
“Had we sounded the siren that night, we were afraid that people would have gone mauka,” Andaya said, using a word meaning “to the mountainside.”
“And if that’s the case, then they would have gone into the fire,” he said.
Andaya said the agency’s protocol to warn of brushfires had been to use other alert systems that send messages to cellphones and through television and radio.
Records show Andaya has downplayed the use of sirens, having repeatedly described them as a “last resort” in recent years.
At a 2020 meeting, as he was reporting that only 58 of the island’s more than 70 sirens worked during the most recent monthly test, he said that the process to fix them was slow and that there were other ways to notify the public during emergencies.
A fire official responded that they were still important during major emergencies, when power and phones might be down.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to diminish the value of sirens,” Andaya said. “I totally agree with you, chief, that the sirens are important.”
Phil Helsel, Lewis Kamb, Todd Miyazawa and Debra Jones contributed.
