A new report released by the Hawaii Attorney General’s Office shows that an emergency manager delayed his return, communications broke down and forecasts weren’t heeded during the Maui wildfire that became the deadliest in U.S. history. Attorney General Anne Lopez said this phase of the report is not to place blame on anyone. FILE - Photos of victims are displayed under white crosses at a memorial for victims of the August 2023 wildfire, above the Lahaina Bypass highway, Dec.
Meanwhile the head of the Maui Emergency Management Agency, Herman Andaya, was off-island at a work conference and getting regular text messages and calls from staffers about the rapidly changing fires. After a series of evacuations in Lahaina, he asked his assistant if he should come home but was told that “it may look OK,” according to the report. A few hours later, after much of the town had burned, Andaya said he would come home the following morning.
As firefighters and other emergency crews scrambled to evacuate houses and get people to safety, dark smoke dropped visibility to near-zero at times. Those roads that weren’t blocked by trees, utility poles or power lines became Many of the department’s crews and engines were already deployed to fight other wildfires on a different part of the island when Lahaina began to burn. The back-up fire engines used in emergencies weren’t fully stocked with equipment, and valuable minutes were lost restocking them before they could be put into action.
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