Maui wildfire: Why were emergency sirens not sounded? An official explains

Herman Andaya, Maui's emergency management chief on Wednesday (August 17) defended the agency's decision to not sound sirens during last week's deadly wildfire. Questions are now being raised about whether sounding sirens might have saved lives.

Andaya said that sirens in Hawaii are used to alert people to tsunamis. The administrator of Maui County Emergency Management Agency further said that had sirens have been sounded, it might have led people to evacuate towards the danger.

The grassland fire on August 8 raced down the base of a volcano sloping into the tourist resort town of Lahaina, killing at least 110 people 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 said during a press conference, which grew tense at times as reporters questioned the government response during the fire.

"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 said.

Instead of sirens, Maui relied on two different alert systems, text messages to phones and broadcast of emergency messages on television and radio.

Andaya said because sirens are mainly located on the waterfront, their use would have been useless to people on higher ground.

Hawaii Governor Josh Green also defended the decision not to sound sirens. Green has ordered the state attorney general to conduct a comprehensive review of the emergency response that would bring in outside investigators and experts, clarifying on Wednesday that the review 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 said.

Mounting criticism

Criticism of the official response has mounted since the disasters. Survivors have reportedly complained that there were no official warnings.

Disaster management officials reacted strongly to the suggestion that local people have lost trust in them. The officials have insisted that it is the outsiders who are complaining.

"You think that people that live here that are helping don't care?" said Maui Mayor Richard Bissen at a sometimes-testy news conference.

"Talk to the people born and raised here. Talk to the people who are trying to piece it together. The reason you should trust us is because this is our home."

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