Communications breakdown left officials and residents without info amid Maui fire
As wildfires ripped across Maui last August, the head of the emergency management agency dragged his heels about returning to the island amid the unfolding crisis, while a broad communications breakdown left authorities in the dark and residents without emergency alerts, according to a report released Wednesday.
Communications problems were also encountered by the Hawaiian Electric Company, with officials unable to confirm that power lines were de-energized until well after flames had caused widespread damage, the report from the Hawaii Attorney General said.
It was the second of two major assessments out this week about the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century. A report released Tuesday by the Western Fire Chiefs Association detailed the unprecedented challenges facing the Maui Fire Department during a series of blazes including one that killed 101 people in the historic town of Lahaina.
The new report said five days before the flames broke out, meteorologists issued a warning that strengthening winds resulting from a Pacific hurricane south of Hawaii could create an extreme risk of wildfires across the islands on Aug. 8.
“Confidence in the development of critical fire weather conditions this many days away is quite rare, and we believe that this warrants a heads up to you,” a U.S. National Weather Service forecaster said in an email to Hawaii fire contacts on Aug. 3.
Maui Emergency Management Agency administrator Herman Andaya was off island at a conference on Oahu on
Aug. 8 as the Maui fire intensified. His call and text records show that he was getting updates from Gaye Gabaut, an administrative assistant. After a series of evacuations in Lahaina, Gabaut commented to Andaya that “multiple people look overwhelmed,” according to the report. Andaya asked if he should go home to which Gabaut responded, “that it may look okay.”
After the fire had been burning for more than five hours, Gabaut relayed to Andaya that flames had reached Front Street in Lahaina. According to the report, Andaya responded that “he better come home tomorrow.”
The preliminary report also described a breakdown in communication between police responders, firefighters and emergency officials after cellular networks went down. Both the police and fire departments had to communicate using their handheld or car radios on closed channels that public officials and others could not listen to, according to the report.
Meanwhile, a stretched and limited dispatch centre had single operators monitoring five or six channels at a time to keep up with what was happening on the ground.
Inoperative cell towers left residents and tourists with few options to receive emergency alerts like evacuation orders. And the closed systems used by police created a dam of information that was not being relayed in a timely way to the mayor and emergency officials, the report said.
The attorney general’s report is the first phase of a comprehensive assessment that includes a timeline of the 72 hours before, during and after the fire.
Phase 2 of the report will focus on how Maui’s fire protection system functioned during the emergency, specifically what conditions fed the inferno, the attempts to stop its spread, and the evacuation of residents. The report said the third phase will try to answer the critical question “How do we prevent this from happening again?”
Hawaiian Electric has acknowledged that one of its power lines fell and caused a fire in Lahaina early on Aug. 8, but the utility company denies that the morning fire caused the flames that burned through the town later that day.