It was when she discovered, terrified, the flames in front of her house that Vilma Reed understood that the city of Lahaina was devoured by the gigantic fire which killed at least 89 people on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Like many others, she had received no alert or evacuation order.
“Do you want to know when we knew there was a fire? When it arrived in front of the house,” the 63-year-old woman told AFP in the parking lot of an evacuation center. “The mountain was burning behind our house and we were told damn it!”
“I ran in front of the fire to get my family out,” she recalls.
She loaded her daughter, her grandson and her two cats into the car and then left town.
An investigation into the origin of this terrifying fire was opened on Saturday, but experts believe that, whatever the cause, a combination of circumstances helped its rapid spread.
Potentially aggravating factors include non-native vegetation that burns easily and grows out of control, volcanic topography that generates desiccating downdraft winds, an exceptionally dry winter, and a raging hurricane southwest of Maui Island.
Hawaii, accustomed to natural disasters, is home to active volcanoes, experiences earthquakes, experiences powerful and regular tropical storms, sometimes tsunamis. The absence of warnings from the authorities provoked amazement and anger.
“We underestimated the dangerousness and the speed of the fire,” admitted Hawaii Congresswoman Jill Tokuda on CNN.
“It’s not like the power of hurricane winds, bushfires and red flags are unheard of in Hawaii,” she continued.
“We’ve seen this before (with Hurricane) Lane. Lane (in 2018) didn’t teach us a lesson. Bushfires can happen with the strong winds of the hurricane,” Tokuda added.
The fire caused power outages. Residents of Lahaina told the press that they had been deprived of mobile phone connections that authorities use to warn of danger.
Power outages have certainly also prevented residents from being informed by television and radio, where official alerts are usually issued.
The loudest outdoor sirens, meant to alert islanders of danger, did not sound on Maui, the Hawaii Emergency Services Administration (HI-EMA) said Friday.
Hawaii Governor Josh Green said it was “too early for (him) to say” whether the lack of sirens was a technical failure or a deliberate decision by the operators.
On Friday, State Attorney General Anne Lopez announced a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the fire, including “critical decision-making.”
Kamuela Kawaakoa now lives in a retractable tent, and feeds himself thanks to the charity of strangers. For him, the city seems to have been left to itself.
“There was no emergency signal. No warning system went off, nothing, so some didn’t even know about the fire, until it was too late “, tells AFP this 34-year-old man.
He worked in a restaurant on a tourist street in the city, which had gone up in smoke.
According to him, even without cellular service or electricity, we should have found a way to warn the population.
“You can always call 911 without any cell service, you should be able to get emergency alerts on your phone,” he said.
“They must be prepared for this kind of thing”, he believes, “we could have done more to save many people who died in this fire”.
08/13/2023 06:33:22 – Kahului (United States) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
