The most charitable evaluation of the Hawaii authorities’ actions during the Lahaina disaster is that they were incompetent. That being said, there are some circumstances in which incompetence is so grossly negligent that it’s criminal. Charges should certainly be brought. From Michael Snyder at endoftheamericandream.com:
Just when you think that this story can’t get any worse, somehow it does. It is being reported that the wildfires that we just witnessed in Maui were the deadliest wildfires in the entire history of the United States, and according to Moody’s Analytics they caused somewhere between four and six billion dollars in economic damage. But if authorities had responded more competently, the outcome could have been much different. In fact, the fire that ultimately completely destroyed Lahaina could have been controlled if fire crews had not “left the scene even though the fire was still burning”…
Maui locals have questioned why the blaze which developed into deadly wildfires that swept across the island was left unattended by firefighters hours before it spread.
A fire broke out on the outskirts of Lahaina at around 6.30am on Tuesday, August 8 and was declared ‘100 percent contained’ several hours later. Fire crews then left the scene even though the fire was still burning within the containment area.
But within a few hours, there was a ‘flareup’ which quickly spiraled out of control and fire crews who responded again were unable to extinguish it.
Once the fire came roaring back to life, hundreds of lives could have been saved if authorities had not put up a barricade that blocked the only paved road out of Lahaina…
As flames tore through a West Maui neighborhood, car after car of fleeing residents headed for the only paved road out of town in a desperate race for safety.
And car after car was turned back toward the rapidly spreading wildfire by a barricade blocking access to Highway 30.
