The emergency management chief on Maui, Herman Andaya, called it quits. He’s been taking serious heat for “not activating public alert sirens as devastating wildfires raged across swaths of the Hawaiian island.” He had a really good reason for that which nobody wants to hear. To save everyone further aggravation, he split.
Emergency chief says ‘Aloha’
The chief decided not to hit the siren. He knew what he was doing but nobody cares about that part. As criticism of that decision did nothing but grow worse, Maui Mayor Richard Bissen “accepted the resignation of Maui Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) Administrator Herman Andaya.”
Mr. Andaya listed “health reasons” as his justification and made it “effective immediately.” By health reasons, he means that he’s been getting death threats. Totally unjustified ones. Beyond the threats, he probably is having health issues, along with the rest of his neighbors, from the devastating toxins released by the fires.
Everyone seems to assume, wrongly, that the sirens were the only warning out there. The more important factor, which caused Chief Andaya not to pull the siren, is that those are specifically for use in a tidal wave “tsunami.” Everyone on the island is conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs to run for the hills when they hear the siren.
NEW: Maui Emergency Management Agency chief Herman Andaya has resigned due to “health reasons” after he refused to play sirens to alert Maui residents of the fire.
He should be dragged away in handcuffs and thrown in jail instead.
Before resigning, Andaya made it clear that he… pic.twitter.com/2r9PYRaibC
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 18, 2023
In this case, that would be a horribly fatal mistake. The hills were the most dangerous places to be and everyone needed to head for the beach instead.
With or without the chief, Mayor Bissen is under the gun to get help to his constituents, after he finds the 1,000 still missing. That’s not a good number considering it’s not a large island. The death toll is already up to 111.
Those with loved ones in the historic town of Lahaina aren’t swayed by logic and insist that the sirens would have saved lives. That’s a hard claim to back up considering there really wasn’t anywhere for anyone to go for safe evacuation. There certainly weren’t any chopper or boat lifts from anyone with the equipment. Whoever didn’t do that needs to be fired next.
Text messages and broadcasts
Reporters hounding chief Andaya demanded to know if he had “had any regrets about not deploying the public siren system.” He certainly doesn’t, “I do not,” he declared. He went on to say that the sirens were meant for tsunamis “and that there was a risk that activating them in this instance would have sent people fleeing to higher ground. If that was the case, then they would have gone into the fire.”
Every phone, tablet, television billboard and electronic sign board was flashing alerts with instructions. The siren would have only been confusing and done more harm than good.
The island chain’s government backs that up on their website, noting “the public siren system has been in place since a deadly tsunami hit Hawaii in April 1946, killing more than 150 people. Officials established the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and alert system in response.” The chief really does have a leg to stand on. It doesn’t say a word about fires but it is the “first tsunami warning system in the U.S.”
Hawaii official emergency services chief, Herman Andaya, resigns amid backlash, when asked if he regrets not sounding the alarm to alert residents of wildfires he responded, “I do not.”
Should he face criminal charges?
— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) August 18, 2023
Other emergency officials confirmed “that other forms of public alert systems were activated amid the inferno, including text messages sent to phones and emergency television and radio messages.” While there “were communications and cellphone outages during the crisis,” there was also a lot of word of mouth.
Hawaii’s Democrat Attorney General, Anne Lopez, will be persecuting Chief Andaya personally and has already “launched a review of the decision-making and policies leading up to, during and after the wildfires.” To score political points with a hot-button issue, her “investigation is expected to include analyzing decisions not to sound sirens and could take months to complete.”
The independent “third-party private organization with experience in emergency management” is expected to come back with a final report vindicating the decision of the chief not to sound the sirens. Lawmaker Jill N. Tokuda agrees. She “suggested that the alerts might not have helped as much as some think. If residents heard the sirens, they would not know what the crisis was. You might think it’s a tsunami, by the way, which is our first instinct. You would run toward land, which in this case would be toward fire.“
