The death toll from the Maui wildfires rose to 67 on Friday as search teams combed through the smoldering ruins of Lahaina, and Hawaiian officials sought to determine how the inferno spread so rapidly through the historic resort town with little warning.
  • Jim
    26·
    1 year ago

    The island includes emergency sirens intended to warn of natural disasters and other threats, but they did not appear to have sounded during the fire.

    Holy shit. This is just tragic. Who knows how many lives could have been saved if they’d had a proper warning?

    • Atrabiliousaurus@lemmy.world
      10·
      1 year ago

      From the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency website

      Hawaiʻi has the largest single integrated Outdoor Siren Warning System for Public Safety in the world. The all-hazard siren system can be used for a variety of both natural and human-caused events; including tsunamis, hurricanes, dam breaches, flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, terrorist threats, hazardous material incidents, and more.

      They test them here every month too. Shameful they didn’t sound them when needed the most.

    • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
      42·
      1 year ago

      Look at paradise. They had an emergency alert that went out. All it did was gridlock the entire town and people just died on the street instead of in their house. I get that we all want to be mad at something, but the emergency notification would have made a negligible difference given the speed and ferocity of this fire.