For Crying Out Loud, The Sirens Aren’t The Only Problem To listen to the news, one might think that the biggest problem with the Maui wildfire disaster in Lahaina is that the emergency warning sirens didn’t go off or weren’t activated. To listen to reporting, one might have the impression that if only the sirens had gone off, everyone could have gotten away safely — and that’s not even a little bit true.
We are desperate for information about what happened, what went wrong in Lahaina. You wrote: "Yet it would be helpful for everyone if the media could apply some critical thinking to their reporting." Amen. But that requires media wanting to illuminate and enlighten their readers and viewers. Sadly, for the most part, the 24-hour news cycle means they are already thinking about what they are going to cover next as they are trying to piece together what's going on in front of their eyes, or what has just happened. "What bleeds leads," as they say--and that's never been truer than it is today. There are so many lessons to be learned from understanding what happened--and what didn't happen--in this fire. Determining what the lessons are takes time, and the media's focus will have long-since moved beyond Lahaina. You provided a fairly exhaustive list for where to start, Vanessa. But even if the agencies began to diligently work their way through them, even more would arise. I don't need to tell you how complex this all is! And sadly, we Americans have little patience for the complex. If Shift the Country can help people, ordinary people, understand how much is at stake if we don't start addressing complexity--whether it's wildfire or our broken judicial system or our outdated elections system or how we continue to fail to address the pernicious effects of systemic racism...or what we need to do to save our democracy!...maybe we can start to turn the tables and get back on a path of answering the questions and building a sustainable future.
Thank you so much Evelyn. As always, fantastic comments.
I sure hope we can help people understand the stakes. I've been working over the last week to finish up a guide that we can use to get this work off the ground so we can have greater impacts along the lines you discuss. Because we so need to get to what you reference - turning the tables and getting on a path of charting out a sustainable and resilient future.
From a professional Emergency Management perspective, I am curious as to why we can't access their Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) - the most basic of frameworks for responding to disasters and supporting field resources. I'm curious as to why my searching has led me to an inspired, but insufficient, plan that was workshopped and crafted by a private citizen, Joe Pluta, whose profession is in real estate (Google: "West Maui Emergency Plan").
The reason why an EOP is CRITICAL is because it is foundational to Emergency Management's Preparedness sub-cycle that encompasses Planning, Organization, Equipping, Training and Exercise (POETE) - once a jurisdiction has a plan, that plan can be trained to and exercised on. This is critical because Training and Exercise is what develops and socializes an Emergency Management Organization's "muscle memory." It's what identifies capability gaps and allows practitioners to fill voids. I'd want to see PRA'ed After-Action Reports and Improvement Plans (AAR/IP, as prescribed by Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program methodology) to see if any of the response failures were previously identified (e.g., failure to establish delegations of authority, failure to integrate their sirens with their CivicReady mass notification system, failure for the County Fire Department to prioritize mass notifications).
It enrages me that a private citizen even felt the need to craft a plan to support their community; he put in his best efforts, and it's very evident to me that he at least consulted with members of my profession, and that he sought to honor FEMA's Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 101 (CPG 101). These are efforts that local governments should engage upon as a simple exercise in good faith.
It enrages me that a senior government official - a Lieutenant Governor in this case - still has the hutzpah to describe these catastrophic tragedies as "unprecedented." This is 2023 - not 1970. No; none of these catastrophic tragedies are "unprecedented," and the only interpretation of that descriptor is that they failed to see the value in investing in processes and programs that would have served to preserve human life. It enrages me that local fire administration would be so cavalier and negligent as to ascribe a low assessment to a wildfire hazard, and for this to happen; it's as though they haven't looked up the definition for the term "risk" in the dictionary, and they don't understand what the term means.
I hope that with 99 dead and counting, these victims have established precedent in their negligent melons to invest in governmental activities that truly matter in the preservation of human life and their communities.
The citizens of Hawaii require better. They now require transparency and a government that advocates for them.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment. I hope as after-action work or reviews begin that they dig into the questions you have raised here about the planning and preparedness plus things that were in this post - and I'm sure there's a ton of other stuff to look at.
I always hope in tragedies like this that the general public and politicians find the motivation to do as you say - "to invest in governmental activities that truly matter in the preservation of human life and their communities." Yet overall, we continue to *not* do that... and then wish that we had once disaster strikes. Perhaps as the disasters ramp up as climate change intensifies the motivations will shift... but that's a whole lot of death and destruction between here and a different paradigm. It would be great if we could see the change happen without so much tragedy. - Vanessa Burnett
Great article and it will be shared. I own a home in Hawaii (big Island) and Central California. I am in government, trained in emergency management and guess what. I am sincerely heart broke that peopled died. It was a true disaster of a scale that is unheard of. We are all too quick to point fingers. If I were in my home in Hawaii and I heard sirens, I wouldn’t think fire evacuation, but with all the other signs, I would not sit around waiting for someone to tell me to protect myself. People need to think “what if” and prepare.
Thank you so much for this. It is so heartbreaking that so many have died from this fire - with over 300 still missing as of today. People definitely need to take some personal responsibility as well; ideally it would be a mix of an appropriately prepared set of government agencies and residents keeping up on risks, threats, and hazards.
Yes thar is the point. There need to be are a whole set of redundant alert and warning tools. Using only alternate cell and digital technology can lead to points of failure. These newer tools at best miss 20% on a blue sky day…..contingency and emergency tools and process are always needed. Why there is surprise when 9-11 and cell service goes down in these types of disasters. They always do. The voice of experience still advocates for megaphones, sirens, runners and regular evacuation practice especially in rural coastal and wildfire risk communities and neighborhoods
Well said. Totally agree that we need redundancy and multiple delivery methods for alerts, warnings, and emergency notifications. Because as you say -- in a disaster, systems are going to fail and always do. Thank you for this.
We are desperate for information about what happened, what went wrong in Lahaina. You wrote: "Yet it would be helpful for everyone if the media could apply some critical thinking to their reporting." Amen. But that requires media wanting to illuminate and enlighten their readers and viewers. Sadly, for the most part, the 24-hour news cycle means they are already thinking about what they are going to cover next as they are trying to piece together what's going on in front of their eyes, or what has just happened. "What bleeds leads," as they say--and that's never been truer than it is today. There are so many lessons to be learned from understanding what happened--and what didn't happen--in this fire. Determining what the lessons are takes time, and the media's focus will have long-since moved beyond Lahaina. You provided a fairly exhaustive list for where to start, Vanessa. But even if the agencies began to diligently work their way through them, even more would arise. I don't need to tell you how complex this all is! And sadly, we Americans have little patience for the complex. If Shift the Country can help people, ordinary people, understand how much is at stake if we don't start addressing complexity--whether it's wildfire or our broken judicial system or our outdated elections system or how we continue to fail to address the pernicious effects of systemic racism...or what we need to do to save our democracy!...maybe we can start to turn the tables and get back on a path of answering the questions and building a sustainable future.
Thank you so much Evelyn. As always, fantastic comments.
I sure hope we can help people understand the stakes. I've been working over the last week to finish up a guide that we can use to get this work off the ground so we can have greater impacts along the lines you discuss. Because we so need to get to what you reference - turning the tables and getting on a path of charting out a sustainable and resilient future.
- Vanessa Burnett
From a professional Emergency Management perspective, I am curious as to why we can't access their Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) - the most basic of frameworks for responding to disasters and supporting field resources. I'm curious as to why my searching has led me to an inspired, but insufficient, plan that was workshopped and crafted by a private citizen, Joe Pluta, whose profession is in real estate (Google: "West Maui Emergency Plan").
The reason why an EOP is CRITICAL is because it is foundational to Emergency Management's Preparedness sub-cycle that encompasses Planning, Organization, Equipping, Training and Exercise (POETE) - once a jurisdiction has a plan, that plan can be trained to and exercised on. This is critical because Training and Exercise is what develops and socializes an Emergency Management Organization's "muscle memory." It's what identifies capability gaps and allows practitioners to fill voids. I'd want to see PRA'ed After-Action Reports and Improvement Plans (AAR/IP, as prescribed by Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program methodology) to see if any of the response failures were previously identified (e.g., failure to establish delegations of authority, failure to integrate their sirens with their CivicReady mass notification system, failure for the County Fire Department to prioritize mass notifications).
It enrages me that a private citizen even felt the need to craft a plan to support their community; he put in his best efforts, and it's very evident to me that he at least consulted with members of my profession, and that he sought to honor FEMA's Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 101 (CPG 101). These are efforts that local governments should engage upon as a simple exercise in good faith.
It enrages me that a senior government official - a Lieutenant Governor in this case - still has the hutzpah to describe these catastrophic tragedies as "unprecedented." This is 2023 - not 1970. No; none of these catastrophic tragedies are "unprecedented," and the only interpretation of that descriptor is that they failed to see the value in investing in processes and programs that would have served to preserve human life. It enrages me that local fire administration would be so cavalier and negligent as to ascribe a low assessment to a wildfire hazard, and for this to happen; it's as though they haven't looked up the definition for the term "risk" in the dictionary, and they don't understand what the term means.
I hope that with 99 dead and counting, these victims have established precedent in their negligent melons to invest in governmental activities that truly matter in the preservation of human life and their communities.
The citizens of Hawaii require better. They now require transparency and a government that advocates for them.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment. I hope as after-action work or reviews begin that they dig into the questions you have raised here about the planning and preparedness plus things that were in this post - and I'm sure there's a ton of other stuff to look at.
I always hope in tragedies like this that the general public and politicians find the motivation to do as you say - "to invest in governmental activities that truly matter in the preservation of human life and their communities." Yet overall, we continue to *not* do that... and then wish that we had once disaster strikes. Perhaps as the disasters ramp up as climate change intensifies the motivations will shift... but that's a whole lot of death and destruction between here and a different paradigm. It would be great if we could see the change happen without so much tragedy. - Vanessa Burnett
Great article and it will be shared. I own a home in Hawaii (big Island) and Central California. I am in government, trained in emergency management and guess what. I am sincerely heart broke that peopled died. It was a true disaster of a scale that is unheard of. We are all too quick to point fingers. If I were in my home in Hawaii and I heard sirens, I wouldn’t think fire evacuation, but with all the other signs, I would not sit around waiting for someone to tell me to protect myself. People need to think “what if” and prepare.
Thank you so much for this. It is so heartbreaking that so many have died from this fire - with over 300 still missing as of today. People definitely need to take some personal responsibility as well; ideally it would be a mix of an appropriately prepared set of government agencies and residents keeping up on risks, threats, and hazards.
Yes thar is the point. There need to be are a whole set of redundant alert and warning tools. Using only alternate cell and digital technology can lead to points of failure. These newer tools at best miss 20% on a blue sky day…..contingency and emergency tools and process are always needed. Why there is surprise when 9-11 and cell service goes down in these types of disasters. They always do. The voice of experience still advocates for megaphones, sirens, runners and regular evacuation practice especially in rural coastal and wildfire risk communities and neighborhoods
Well said. Totally agree that we need redundancy and multiple delivery methods for alerts, warnings, and emergency notifications. Because as you say -- in a disaster, systems are going to fail and always do. Thank you for this.