I’m sure everyone has heard about the wildfires on Maui, which totally destroyed the old town of Lahaina, and killed many people (the death toll keeps rising).  But I’m betting that not so many have heard what really happened.  The mainstream media, which I am coming to believe is a greater withholder of news that disseminator of news, has selectively told the public the story.

So I will show you, through a post on Twitter (sorry, I’m still going to call it that).  I will show the link to the original post, then copy over the letter from the local resident that the publisher of the original post links to.  First, the original Tweet:

Next, here is the letter referred to in Matt’s post:

First let me start off by saying Lahaina is a desert climate and has been since plantation owners rerouted the water source to other parts of the island. Lahaina used to be a lush landscape. The infrastructure has largely remained the same since its inception. This means a cluttered nest of wires and rotting buildings. We have fires every year due to fallen electric lines. This isn’t something new. In my opinion, this disaster could’ve been completely prevented had they spent the money to upgrade to in-ground electric lines. Many have asked over the years but were told there was no funds to do it. It’s a lot easier to secure funding after a disaster. At the very least, HECO (the electric company) could’ve cut the power a lot sooner. HECO CEO Shelee Kimora claimed it could’ve affected specialized medical equipment. This is crazy considering you can’t use medical equipment if it’s incinerated by a fire. Just another excuse to avoid accountability. The state of the art “all hazard” sirens never went off. Herman Andaya (Maui EMA director) who was in charge of making the decision to turn on the sirens said he didn’t regret it. The next day he resigned due to “health issues”. No cell service and no loudspeaker either. There was no warning of any sort. People were in their houses and completely unaware until it the fire was close. There was a fire earlier and the Maui Fire Department said it was “100% contained”. The police allowed incoming traffic into the town coming from Kaanapali but closed the road off on the other side due to a downed line that wasn’t even blocking the road. This caused a gridlock. Residents’ water was turned off with no way to protect their houses. Firefighters ran out of water and were denied access by Kaleo Manuel (DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management) until it was too late. This unnecessarily put firefighters at even greater risk. I am especially embarrassed with leadership treating locals like criminals. They immediately enacted a roadblock (they could’ve just closed the fire zone) and implemented a military-enforced curfew 10pm – 6pm. There has also been a near-total media block in the fire zone. This is unconstitutional! Many residents believe they have been soft selling the body count and knew they were hundreds of bodies that they collected the first day. Most of which are likely to be children who stayed home, without any cell service or power. Rumors of them filling containers with bodies and stacking them up in non refrigerated buildings. I suspect they’re trying to keep numbers down until the news cycle is over. Despite not providing aid themselves, they have made it incredibly hard for residents to help by blocking the wharf and turning away boats with local aid, they blocked the roads, FEMA has been confiscating pallets of aid claiming it’s not fema approved items and they are not trained to distribute them. Maui’s Mayor Bissen has acted like a bully throughout this entire mess. Just recently he threw a fit and tried to close down the press conference after a reporter asked “how many children are missing?” The people need transparency and accountability and independent reporters who won’t be bullied!”

This is very disturbing news, isn’t it?  With the local and state governments actively covering up what really happened.

Finally, here are some photos I took when we were in Lahaina on our 2018 cruise to Hawaii.  Most of this is gone now.  And no, it’s not just “stuff”, it’s history, and lives, and livelihoods destroyed.

Lahaina, Maui, as it was, and is no longer.  We are hearing stories of the state government vowing to acquire the land that its owners lost to the fires.  Government working against, and not for, the people.  Weep for the people of Maui.