Maui officers defend resolution to not sound sirens throughout wildfire

AFP

Maui’s emergency administration chief has defended his company’s resolution towards sounding sirens throughout final week’s lethal wildfire amid questions on whether or not doing so might need saved lives.

Herman Andaya, administrator of the Maui County Emergency Management Agency, stated sirens in Hawaii are used to alert individuals to tsunamis. Using it in the course of the hearth might need led individuals to evacuate towards the hazard, he informed reporters.

The grassland hearth on August 8 raced down the bottom of a volcano sloping into the vacationer resort city of Lahaina, killing a minimum of 110 individuals and destroying or damaging some 2,200 buildings.

“The public is trained to seek higher ground in the event that the siren is sounded,” Andaya stated throughout a press convention, which grew tense at occasions as reporters questioned the federal government response in the course of the hearth.

“Had we sounded the siren that night, we’re afraid that people would have gone mauka (to the mountainside) and if that was the case then they would have gone into the fire,” Andaya stated.

Maui, as a substitute, relied on two totally different alert methods, one which despatched textual content messages to telephones and one other that broadcast emergency messages on tv and radio, Andaya stated.

Since the sirens are primarily positioned on the waterfront, they might have been ineffective to individuals on increased floor, he stated.

Hawaii Governor Josh Green additionally defended the choice to not sound sirens. Green has ordered the state lawyer basic to conduct a complete evaluation of the emergency response that may usher in exterior investigators and specialists, clarifying on Wednesday that the evaluation is “not a criminal investigation in any way”.

“The most important thing we can do at this point is to learn how to keep ourselves safer going forward,” Green stated.