Hawaii Fires - dozens confirmed dead and hundreds missing

JP Liz V1

RIP those who lost their lives in the fires

Maui hit bad

It is such a beautiful Island

Cluedo Monopoly

Looks rough alright. I imagine the vegetation can get very dry very quickly.

Fun fact - Hawaii is the only US state that does not have at least one straight line for its borders.

Overheal

36 dead and counting. 270+ buildings burned up. Weeks of dried out weather, high temperatures and ripe conditions for gusts of wind that can knock out power lines, throw things around, trigger lightning, send a cigarette flying out of your hand, etc.; they have no idea yet what exactly started the fire but what caused it to be especially catastrophic were hurricane-induced winds which fanned and oxygenated the flames across dry flammable landscape. Federal emergency has been declared for it. Rest in Peace..

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-did-maui-fire-start-cause-lahaina-hawaii-wildfire/

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120961868#Comment_120961868

Go start a thread then

Kermit.de.frog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120961868#Comment_120961868

Everyone on the planet relates to those they are closet to culturally, socially, economically, linguistically. It's not choice, it's entirely natural. For us in this case that's the US.

Also in this case in Africa these are huge stories, just not here.

Of course bad or worse things happen outside the western world but most people, while accepting it's tragic, simply will never care all that much.

People aren't being selfish. It's completely natural unconscious bias.

Do 99% of people here care when an earthquake happens in Turkey or a flood in Pakistan? They don't care anymore than those populations would care if it happened here.

JP Liz V1

82 years Pearl Harbour attacks this year too

There is 36 confirmed dead so far and the exact cause of the fire is still unknown - CBS News

mugz808

It's very tragic - the death toll is honestly going to be in the hundreds. There are still over 1000 missing (I live here for over a decade now.. from over there...). One of the largest towns just wiped out in a few hours.

silverharp

Last week there was Twitter chatter that the death toll could in upwards of a thousand but hoped it wasnt true. The governor is now on record as saying around a thousand are unaccounted for and could skew heavily kids. You can understand them slow rolling the reporting because it will be a huge shock to their psyche.

Again you'd hope it isnt true but given that it is an island, figuring out the missing must be relatively straight forward especially after nearly 2 weeks

https://twitter.com/TaraBull808/status/1693481333060972952

Gregor Samsa

Determining who's missing probably isn't as easy as you're making out.

Arriving at an accurate count in a mass casualty disaster can in some cases take months or even years, researchers and forensic anthropologists said.

“We’re still trying to take stock of who was in the area during the fire, who is missing,” Lynn Goldman, an epidemiologist and the dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, which studied the death toll after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, previously told NBC News. “We’re talking about people who lived in Lahaina, tourists, transients.”

“The death toll number is always provisional, in a way,” she said. “I assume people won’t stop trying to find remains and the work will take a very, very long time.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/maui-wildfires-850-people-missing-rcna100918

NIMAN

Why isn't the media talking about this?

Followed by a link to NBCNews reporting on huge number missing..

jaykay74

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121008312#Comment_121008312

I presume you mean the US media? Not to be callous but not sure why the Irish media would follow this closely. In terms of the Irish media cycle, it happened (the event itself), it was reported (over a couple of days) and then the news cycle in Ireland moved on.

L.Ball

if this isn't a call to action regarding climate change I don't know what is, imagine if that happened here, we'd be even less equipped to deal with it.

Overheal

The most likely ignition of the fire was a tree being blown into a powerline, but it is officially undetermined as of yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WEeO6IfFSM

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121008286#Comment_121008286

a final total for sure , but this didnt happen at night , it was during the day , school was just starting back but was cancelled that day because of the high winds. So any families with kids would most likely be in more than one location that day, they will know by now all the families that are missing a relative. Give or take ~5%, they will know the number.

ceadaoin.

Power not shut off initially when the risk of fires was known, no sirens or emergency alerts activated, water shut off, roads back into town closed so parents were unable to get to their kids. Seems like a lot of mistakes were made in the response to these fires, which ultimately led to more lives being lost. I hope people are held accountable and in future, better protocols put in place.

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121008445#Comment_121008445

Tourists and transient people make up quite a lot of people in a place like that.

And the period after school starts is often when grandparents and families with pre-school kids prefer to travel.

Beasty

threads merged

NSAman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121008510#Comment_121008510

Seems as if there are many many questions being posed about unusual things happening with this fire. Some seem to be so far fetched as to be preposterous, others have validity. I find the keeping away of reporters particularly interesting. Many have been harassed or stopped from reporting. Something doesn’t seem right in all of this.

Shocking that this fire could cause so many death in a beautiful place.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121010264#Comment_121010264

there is a lot of BS conspiracy theories, I mean if the wind was that bad that the schools shut, thats your answer.

here is the/a Mayor being grilled on why they havnt said how many kids are missing , claiming he doesnt know , but at this stage they must, 2 weeks and the schools havnt coordinated class rolls with information from families reporting missing family members? not a thing

https://twitter.com/ImMeme0/status/1693095420451238255

NSAman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121011243#Comment_121011243

Yep lots of conspiracy theories abounding. It is shocking the amount of incompetence that is in display at the moment, by many officials on the island.

it wouldn’t fill me with ANY confidence seeing many of those same officials giving “press conferences”.

one thing that really irked the hell out of me was the $700 payment. It’s Hawaii for gods sake, $700 would barely buy you a weeks groceries for a family. The whole situation is a farce.

I really feel sorry for those who have lost everything and have to deal with this stupidity in officialdom.

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121011243#Comment_121011243

The schools which may have burned down, or which may be staffed be de-housed teachers? Or which are attended by families who may have evacuated to relatives on mainland US or were otherwise too busy to consider reporting to a school district they're not in?

If they don't know exactly how many people are missing, given that it's not a police state and the government doesn't keep track of individual status, and not everyone is a US citizen anyway, it will take quite some time to correlate all the various RFIs from relatives overseas asking for status with all the other records. Oh, and also combined with identifying bodies recovered who aren't 'missing', but just haven't been identified yet.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121012155#Comment_121012155

you have several sources of fuzzy data, but primarily parents that have reported a missing child, thats not fuzzy in the slightest, thats your lowest number and that would have been known for several days now. Its not a police state indeed but someone is either on the island or they have flown off it, so the latter group would be known

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121011426#Comment_121011426

one thing that really irked the hell out of me was the $700 payment. It’s Hawaii for gods sake, $700 would barely buy you a weeks groceries for a family. The whole situation is a farce.

Outrage bait tbh. Do you really think $700 is the only thing they are getting for relief? It's not...

Let's talk about Hawaii and $700 Payments

Beau of the Fifth Column isn't just a youtuber he's also from Tallahassee and a working member of the Cajun Navy iirc, he has experience firsthand helping people in disasters and experiencing disasters. He lives and breathes this ****, along with living and breathing the **** that runs around on social media for the sake of debunking it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtsacMUlWg4

As he puts it what most upsets him about the talking point is that it misinforms Hawaiians who may think that's the only form of relief they can avail of. He also helpfully explains the difference between Relief and Recovery. "Do not let these people let you think these resources aren't available, there is tons."

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121012350#Comment_121012350

Or taken a boat from Maui to Kuai or Oahu... there are plenty of those too and I doubt there was a departure desk at the marina/port.

You are correct it is a lowest number, but knowing the lowest isn't very helpful if you're trying to identify the actual amount.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121012476#Comment_121012476

You are correct it is a lowest number, but knowing the lowest isn't very helpful if you're trying to identify the actual amount.

It's still a part of the analysis process.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121012476#Comment_121012476

Of course I dont know what the document trails are, but if they are still within the Island group they are going to be approaching the system in some form, lost documents, looking for help etc. but knowing the lowest number (especially children) would be breaking it slowly , it could be 10 and everyone would breathe a sigh of relief (sort of) , if its 200, thats a total reframe of what's happening and the point is the authorities know the scale of the number.

ceadaoin.

How does closing the only road out of town make any sense? It's not like the fire would stop at a barricade. Heads need to roll over this. Just mistake after mistake

https://apnews.com/article/hawaii-fires-timeline-maui-lahaina-road-block-c8522222f6de587bd14b2da0020c40e9

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121018352#Comment_121018352

As it says in the article, fire was the reason for only some of the barricades - the rest were because of downed power lines.

JP Liz V1

Should Oprah and The Rock give more? Getting backlash for asking for donations, looks like Oprah's home not affected

The talk of deliberate started fires for land deals have been shut down