The slow recovery of the Lahaina area of the Hawaiian island of Maui continues as specialized recovery teams with cadaver dogs have searched about 40% of fire-ravaged historic town for remains.
The Lahaina wildfire death toll increased by five on Wednesday — to 111 — more than a week after flames ripped through the historic town. Meanwhile, Maui continued to slowly release the names of those who died. Three more victims, all elderly, were identified as more positive IDs were made.. . . . As the work of understanding what happened continues, so too does the slow, grueling task of recovering remains. Some 30 teams armed with cadaver dogs are searching the charred ruins of Lahaina town, focusing on a miles-wide area of burned-out cars, homes and businesses.Authorities have repeatedly said it’s not clear how many were killed in the fire.But the number of people unaccounted for has stubbornly remained at about 1,000, suggesting that the death toll will almost undoubtedly increase.
As the staggering toll continues to be tallied, it is becoming apparent that the Maui wildfires may reasonably be classified as the first “woke-caused” disaster.
To begin with, the rush to eliminate carbon emissions may have killed the implementation of effective fire prevention policies.
Legal Insurrection readers recall my recent reports that downed power lines were being blamed as the initiating case of the fire. At the end of 2019, Hawaiian Electric issued a press release about wildfire risks assessed after hurricane-based winds contributed to a 2018 blaze.
The Wall Street Journal notes that Hawaiian Electric was well aware of the potential for this situation, but diverted resources away from fire safety support in order to meet state-required green energy mandates.
In 2015, lawmakers passed legislation mandating that the state derive 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2045, the first such requirement in the U.S.The company dove into reaching the goals, stating in 2017 that it would reach the benchmark five years ahead of schedule.In 2019, under pressure to replace the output of two conventional power plants set to retire, the company sought to contract for 900 megawatts of renewable energy, the most it had pursued at any one time.“You have to look at the scope and scale of the transformation within [Hawaiian Electric] that was occurring throughout the system,” said Mina Morita, who chaired the state utilities commission from 2011 to 2015. “While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically the focus was on electricity generation.”
When you have limited capital, choices have to be made. However, Hawaiian Electric may have made different choices if woke legislators adhering to climate change theology didn’t mandate the drive to renewables.
Equity considerations are apparently another contributing factor in this disaster. A state water official delayed the release of water that landowners wanted to help protect their property from fires, because water is to be revered and not used.
Specifically, according to accounts of four people with knowledge of the situation, M. Kaleo Manuel, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner and DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management, initially balked at West Maui Land Co.’s requests for additional water to help prevent the fire from spreading to properties managed by the company.According to the sources, Manuel wanted West Maui Land to get permission from a taro, or kalo, farm located downstream from the company’s property. Manuel eventually released water but not until after the fire had spread. It was not clear on Monday how much damage the fire did in the interim or whether homes were damaged.
At a minimum, that delay by the Commission on Water Resource Management (CWRM) contributed to the conditions for fire in the area to flare-up.
According to the letter, although the initial fire was contained at 9 a.m., there were reports of fallen power lines, fierce winds, outages and low reservoir levels, prompting the company to reach out to the commission to request approval to divert more water from streams so it could store as much water as possible for fire control.Instead of approving the request, CWRM asked the company whether the Maui Fire Department had requested permission to dip into the reservoirs and directed it to first inquire with the downstream user to ensure that his loi and other uses would not be impacted by a temporary reduction of water supply.. . . . By around 3:30 p.m., a flare-up had shut down the Lahaina Bypass.“At around 6:00 p.m., we received CWRM’s approval to divert more water,” Tremble wrote. “By then, we were unable to reach the siphon release to make the adjustments that would have allowed more water to fill our reservoirs.“We watched the devastation unfold around us without the ability to help. We anxiously awaited the morning knowing that we could have made more water available to MFD if our request had been immediately approved,” he said.
The response to the wildfires on Maui will likely be studied for years as an example of what not to do.
The magnitude of devastation may be just enough to make people rethink ‘climate crisis’ and social justice narratives, as well as their potentially destructive “solutions.” Let’s hope so, or more disasters of this nature loom large in our future.
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