Maui Death Toll, Looting And Lack Of Supplies

The death toll in Maui, according to CNN this morning, stands at 99 but with only 25% of the burn area searched, meaning that it is likely to go up. On the plus side, however, the article mentions that shelters are beginning to empty as alternate housing (hotels and Air bnb's) becomes available, and "Hawaiian Electric planned to have power restored to 80% of its 12,400 customers who lost power by end of Monday, Hawaiian Electric CEO Shelee Kimura said." 

    There have been criticisms dogging the state and local governments, however. As the CNN article notes, there were "reports that firefighters encountered weak or no pressure at some hydrants and that a system of 400 disaster alarms failed to activate as the fire spread." But that is not all. Insider has published an article entitled "Maui fire survivors describe nighttime looting and rerouted supply drops as they say local leadership botches emergency response," which relates:

    While rescue crews made their way across the island with water, food, and first aid, locals told Insider supply drops were being rerouted and anguished residents were taking matters into their own hands.

    "There's some police presence. There's some small military presence, but at night, people are being robbed at gunpoint," Matt Robb, a co-owner of a Lāhainā bar called The Dirty Monkey, told Insider. "People are raped and pillaged. I mean, they're going through houses — and then by day, it's hunky-dory. So where is the support? I don't think our government and our leaders, at this point, know how to handle this or what to do."

    The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported a riot nearly broke out between police and about 100 residents after officers closed off access to a highway leading to Lāhainā, one of the hardest-hit areas on the island, preventing people from returning home to gather items that could be salvaged.

    Members of the staff of The Dirty Monkey said they had been coordinating with local authorities and community members, organizing and trying to direct supply drops and shipments of essential medications such as insulin to families in need.

    But as a small crew with no formal training in handling emergency response, Robb and Alen Aivazian, another co-owner, said they were left feeling like they'd been abandoned by local leadership, who they said had not communicated effectively with community members about what's going on or how the response was being handled.

    "It's just been really interesting to see how when you have a full truck of a pallet of water or feminine products or whatever, and you're trying to help people, that you're being turned away," Robb said. "And I think there's a better way to organize that to be done. I just don't think it's been done the correct way. I think it comes down to the lack of leadership and the lack of knowledge of how to handle this."

    Aivazian and Robb told Insider they believed the mayor, who has offered limited public comments regarding the tragedy, had floundered in response to the emergency.

    "I think it's the mayor's fault," Aivazian said. "If he would've asked, they had Marines, Coast Guards sitting there waiting, ready to go, and he didn't send them over. Why wouldn't the feds send them over? The mayor didn't ask and the governor didn't push. I mean, what the hell are they doing over there? They're just hanging out at the beach."

Also:

    Kami Irwin, a Maui resident helping to coordinate relief efforts at the Maui Brewing Co. location in Kihei, told Insider that locals were working around the clock, forgoing sleep and creating neighborhood patrols to help keep each other safe and find essentials such as clean drinking water and medications.

    "I had to deal with a situation that wasn't even part of who I am or what I do," Irwin said. "I had to talk to pilots that got grounded with our medical supplies who were stuck on the Big Island because the Department of Health stopped them from transporting insulin. And we have people all over the island that need insulin."

    She said residents chose to take matters into their own hands after realizing they were repeatedly seeing the same local volunteers, not government officials, coordinating aid efforts.

    "We literally have no idea because we are not hearing answers from anybody," Irwin said. "We are still left without knowing what to do. And we just got word that they stopped all air and ground transportation to drop more supplies to the west side of Lāhainā today."

    A couple comments here. First, as we have seen time and again, the government can be as much a hindrance as a help when disaster strikes. You may remember that in 2020, a warehouse of unused disaster relief supplies was discovered in Puerto Rico that had been delivered there in 2017 in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The supplies including food, water, cots, and baby formula, and the discovery led to the the island's director of the Office of Emergency Management being fired. 

    Hurricane Katrina was another grand example of poor government response. The Cato Institute has an article detailing the many ways that FEMA mismanaged its response, including, but not limited to, sending $100 million of ice to cities other than those affected, blocking delivery of emergency supplies ordered by the Methodist Hospital in New Orleans, preventing trucks with water from entering the city, turning away doctors that had volunteered to work at emergency medical facilities and, my favorite, "FEMA also paid for 25,000 mobile homes costing $900 million, but they went virtually unused because of FEMA’s own regulations that such homes cannot be used on flood plains, which is where most Katrina victims lived." Leo Bosner, who worked at FEMA's National Response Coordination Center at the time of Katrina, lays much of the blame at the feet of the Department of Homeland Security which had recently taken control of what had previously been in independent agency. And who can forget the local, state and national officials treated New Orleans more like a war zone than a disaster zone immediately following the hurricane, keeping rescue workers out while sending police and military patrols through the city to confiscate guns and shoot some of the survivors. Also largely forgotten in the mess that was New Orleans that the almost completely non-existent help provided to rural communities. 

    It is because the government acts as a sledge hammer when a scalpel is needed that individual and small group preparations are essential.

    Second, while it is easy to criticize emergency response officials from not letting volunteers distribute food or, in the case of Katrina, not let doctors come in from outside to provide assistance, it must be remembered that these officials do not know these volunteers. They could be thieves or charlatans that may steal the supplies or muck about making the situation worse, perhaps even becoming a casualty themselves. So it is understandable. 

    But that doesn't mean that the benefit of keeping volunteers away outweighs the cost or risk of accepting the unsolicited help. The reality is that in large disasters, government and recognized NGOs (like the Red Cross) simply don't have the manpower to effectively respond. This is where volunteer groups (like the Cajun Navy), churches, and even companies (e.g., Walmart and Costco and IHOP) often play critical roles. Even these organizations, as Katrina showed, are often stymied in their attempts to help. The problem is, in my opinion, that emergency response officials are trying to create order out of a chaotic situation and so, to prevent more chaos, simply don't want or haven't the time to try and integrate these volunteer groups and people into rescue operations.