Lahaina
What Really Happened in Lahaina, Maui
By M Dowling
Author John Leake has begun researching the Lahaina disaster. He hasn’t gotten very far in his research but has already determined it was a predictable and predicted catastrophe. Leake said the risk of catastrophic fire sweeping into a largely wooden town was expected.
Before the fires, on August 7th, the National Weather Service warned of high winds and dry conditions which should have put Lahaina on high alert. No one listened.
The Department of Land and Natural Resources, which controls the water, should have been prepared, but instead they hindered water from being released.
The Maui Fire Prevention Bureau is supposed to monitor fire and life safety hazards before they cause injury and property damage. They did nothing.
The Maui Emergency Management Agency is to warn civilians of clear and present dangers, but they failed to sound the civil alarm sirens.
The US Department of Defense could have transferred Chinook helicopters with the biggest buckets from Oahu to Maui to stand by for fire duty. They did not.
The Maui Police Department could have worked closely with Hawaiian electric to make certain the downed power lines were no longer energized. Instead, they blocked off escape routes to allegedly keep people safe from downed power lines.
The US Coast Guard should be equipped with watercraft capable of crossing shallow reefs like the ones off-shore of Lahaina. There were no watercraft available.
In August 2018, Hurricane Lane almost resulted in the incineration of Lahaina. It was a clear wake-up call that no one listened to.
Mr. Leake concludes that our state and federal governments cannot and should not be trusted to prevent disasters. There are capable and brave men and women who work for our government agencies, but these agencies are impaired by terrible leadership and incompetent and corrupt politicians.
Instead of taking care of business, they use emergencies to allocate billions of dollars of federal funds to their friends.
These are the same people who were handling the Russia Ukraine war. Russia just announced that the Sarmat ICBM’s are on combat duty. It’s the longest range missile that Russia has. It’s nicknamed by NATO the Satan II.
As Mr. Leake notes, the same state officials who claim Putin is a power hungry madman are confident he will not use nuclear weapons. That should be our warning call.