Governor says unclear if emergency siren system failedHawaii governor Josh Green told NBC News he couldn’t say whether Maui’s emergency siren system worked properly before the deadly wildfires spread:
It’s too early for me to tell. Much of the equipment was destroyed with fire and it’s a very remote place. This was a western edge of the island of Maui. Of course, we would never diminish any kind of responsibility …
I’m very reluctant to blame anyone. We were fighting multiple fires that were being moved. Because of these winds, we’re of course, like everyone else, dealing with the extreme changes, global warming, the drying of our land. And then when this storm passed to the south of Hawaii, that was the hurricane – it sent those winds.”
Officials said late on Thursday that the state’s emergency management records did not indicate that sirens were triggered, even though the state has said it has the world’s largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system, the Guardian previously reported. The county’s system did send emergency alerts to cellphones and television and radio stations, but power outages may have limited the impact.
Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the nonprofit Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, was critical of the state’s response in an interview with the the Honolulu Civil Beat. She co-wrote a report in 2014 that warned of the increasing wildfire risk to Lahaina. She told the media outlet:
We keep hearing from certain elected officials and other people being quoted in the media, ‘We had no idea, this is unprecedented.’ But actually, those of us in the wildfire community, meaning our fire agencies, our forestry natural resource management community, we have long been working to increase our risk reduction efforts…
It might not have been 100% preventable, but it could have been mitigated. It could have been lessened.”