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Report finds “no evidence” Hawaii officials prepared for deadly wildfire despite warnings
Investigators reviewing the emergency response to last year’s devastating wildfire on Maui said in a report released Friday they found “no evidence” Hawaii officials made preparations for it, despite days of warnings that critical fire weather was about to arrive.
That lack of planning and a misperception of the risk hindered efforts to evacuate the historic town of Lahaina before it burned, claiming 102 lives, the report said.
“While much of Hawaiʻi, including Maui, has a relatively high risk of wildfire occurrence, it appears the perception of this risk—at the local, state, and national levels—is not always aligned with the actual, growing threat wildfires pose to the population and built environment,” the report said. “This gap between risk perception and reality seems to have contributed to a relative underinvestment in wildfire prevention, preparedness, and response capacity over the years.“
A weather forecaster with the National Weather Service emailed fire managers an “unprecedented advance warning” on Aug. 4, 2023, of the danger that would develop on Aug. 8, including extreme winds as a hurricane passed far to the south, according to the report released by the state attorney general. The email stressed the unusual certainty of forecast models and “significant concern” on the part of forecasters.
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But in the ensuing four days, the report found, there is no evidence that key agencies — the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, Maui Fire Department, Maui Police and others — developed plans for dealing with severe wildfire risk, such as by having extra staff on duty, stationing emergency vehicles or supplies in high-risk areas, or plotting possible evacuations.
“The strongly worded nature of the email, had it been communicated to fire managers in other states with better developed severity preparedness strategies, could have gained attention and prompted discussion and operational planning,” the report said. “It was a call for State of Hawaii fire managers to prepare for the impending extreme weather.”
The heroic efforts of firefighters and police — who frequently risked their lives, sometimes sprinting door-to-door to warn residents to leave or piling evacuees into their cars to drive them to safety — were undercut by a lack of planning as the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century destroyed thousands of buildings and caused billions in damages.
Neither Maui County nor the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency immediately responded to emails seeking comment.
“This investigation serves as a wake-up call for the state and county governments to learn from the past and urgently prepare for the future,” Attorney General Anne Lopez said in a statement accompanying the report.
Maui fire commanders discussed the forecast, but “no evidence of pre-event preparedness plans by the MFD were produced,” the report said. The police and fire departments never established a unified incident command post, and as a result it was more difficult to know who was responding to what, or where evacuation routes were blocked by downed trees or power lines.
The report recommends establishing “standard operating procedures for Red Flag and severe fire weather warning conditions, to include: preparing and pre-positioning supplies, equipment, vehicles, and personnel in high-risk areas; ensuring clear and open lines of communication within and among agencies to optimize for rapid and coordinated deployment of resources; and communicating with the public to aid residents in translating the forecasted conditions and risks into evacuation readiness.”
The departments share a mobile command vehicle, but the county did not provide evidence that it was used that day, the report said. Some emergency vehicles didn’t have equipment for clearing roadblocks like fallen trees or locked gates on private roads.
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With multiple fires burning on Maui before the devastating blaze erupted in the afternoon, police focused on routine duties like traffic control rather than preparing for an evacuation, the report said. Responders lacked an incident action plan, which meant trouble figuring out where to direct resources. The police and fire departments operated separately, hindering communication as the winds toppled utility poles, cutting power and cell service.
And despite the warnings from forecasters, the heads of the county emergency management agency and the Maui Fire Department were both off-island that day, attending conferences in Honolulu. The report said no one appeared to be in charge of strategic resource allocation.
Some of the challenges facing officials and residents were particular to Hawaii and Maui: narrow roads clogged with parked cars and small, inconsistently named dirt roads often blocked by gates.
Many older, wooden homes were designed to resist heat and humidity, not wildfire. They were often separated by less than 6 feet (1.8 meters), and residents frequently left windows open, making it easier for the fire to spread.
Some people died in their cars. Others leaped into the ocean to escape the flames.
The 518-page report, conducted for the Hawaii attorney general’s office by the Fire Safety Research Institute, is the second part of a three-part attempt by officials to understand the tragedy and how best to avoid such disasters in the future.
The review determined that the lack of planning fit a long pattern of apathy to wildfire risk in Hawaii, where tsunamis and hurricanes are considered more pressing dangers, and it was among many factors that set the stage for the catastrophe. The report suggested that fire managers might have focused on the first sentence of the National Weather Service’s email, which noted Hurricane Dora was expected to pass south of the state, rather than make landfall, and thus assumed Hawaii was safe.
Even though a 2018 wildfire in West Maui near Lahaina burned 2,000 acres (810 hectares), destroyed 21 structures and forced 600 people into shelters, the Maui Police Department’s “Natural and Man-Made Disaster Plan” didn’t include wildfires.
The Maui Fire Department has policies for responding to hurricanes — a hurricane watch requires a staffing roster and rotational schedule for relief personnel, for example. But the department had no such policies for high fire danger, the report said.
And even though Maui County passed legislation in 2022 giving the fire department the authority to require property owners to clear vegetation, such as the dry invasive grasses that helped fuel the Aug. 8 fire, under penalty of a $1,000 fine, the county “has not produced any evidence that the MFD has enforced these amendments in the Lahaina area,” the report said.
The report urged Maui police, firefighters, the state land department and Maui emergency managers to work on their procedures and study and implement policies in place in other states.
For example, the report highlights that the “average number of Red Flag Warning days annually in Hawaiʻi is similar to some areas in California where emergency managers and local officials have initiated significant changes to their preparedness efforts over the course of the last 30 years.”
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After Tyre Nichols’ fatal beating, Memphis officer texted photo of bloodied man to ex-girlfriend, she testifies
A former Memphis police officer charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols sent his ex-girlfriend a photo of the badly injured man on the night he was punched, kicked and hit with a police baton following a traffic stop, according to trial testimony Wednesday.
Brittany Leake, a Memphis officer and Demetrius Haley’s former girlfriend, testified during the criminal trial that she was on the phone with Haley when officers pulled Nichols over for a traffic stop. She said she heard a “commotion,” including verbal orders for someone to give officers his hands.
The call ended, but Haley later texted the photo in a group chat comprising Haley, Leake and her godsister, she testified. Prosecutors displayed the photo for the jury. It showed Nichols with his eyes closed, on the ground with what appeared to be blood near his mouth and his hands behind his back.
Leake said that when she saw the photo, her reaction was: “Oh my God, he definitely needs to go to the Med.”
The Med is shorthand for Memphis’ trauma hospital.
The fatal beating, caught on police bodycams and street surveillance cameras, has sparked protests and calls for police reform. Officers said they pulled over Nichols for reckless driving, but Memphis’ police chief said there was no evidence to substantiate that claim.
Haley, Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith are on trial after pleading not guilty to charges that they deprived Nichols of his civil rights through excessive force and failure to intervene, and obstructed justice through witness tampering. Their trial began Sept. 9 and is expected to run three to four weeks.
George Walker IV / AP
The Memphis Police Department fired the three men, along with Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr., after Nichols’ death. The beating was caught on police video, which was released publicly. The officers were later indicted on the federal charges. Martin and Mills have taken plea deals.
During her testimony Wednesday, Leake said she deleted the photo after she saw it and that sending such a photo is against police policy.
“I wasn’t offended, but it was difficult to look at,” she said.
Leake said Haley had sent her photos before of drugs, and of a person who had been injured in a car accident.
Earlier Wednesday, Martin was on the witness stand for a third day. Defense attorneys tried to show inconsistencies between Martin’s statements to investigators and his court testimony. Martin acknowledged lying about what happened to Memphis Police Department internal investigators, to try to cover up and “justify what I did.”
But Martin said he told the truth to FBI investigators after he pleaded guilty in August, including statements about feeling pressure on his duty belt where his gun was located during the traffic stop, but not being able to see if Nichols was trying to get his gun. Martin has testified that he said “let go of my gun” during the traffic stop.
Martin Zummach, the attorney for Justin Smith, asked Martin if he knew of any reasons why Nichols did not simply say, “I give up.”
“He’s out of it,” Martin said. “Disoriented.”
Martin testified that the situation escalated quickly when Haley pulled his gun and violently yanked Nichols from his car, using expletives and failing to tell Nichols why he had been pulled over and removed from the vehicle.
“He never got a chance to comply,” Martin said.
Nichols, who was Black, was pepper sprayed and hit with a stun gun during the traffic stop, but ran away, police video shows. The five officers, who also are Black, then beat him about a block from his home, as he called out for his mother.
Video shows the officers milling about and talking as Nichols struggled with his injuries. Nichols died Jan. 10, 2023, three days after the beating.
An autopsy report shows Nichols – the father of a boy who is now 7 – died from blows to the head. The report describes brain injuries, and cuts and bruises on his head and elsewhere on his body.
Jesse Guy testified that he was working as a paramedic for the Memphis Fire Department the night of the beating. He arrived at the location after two emergency medical technicians, Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge.
Guy said he was not told about the medical problems Nichols had experienced before he arrived, and that Nichols was injured, seated on the ground and unresponsive.
Nichols had no pulse and was not breathing, and it “felt like he was lifeless,” Guy said.
In the ambulance, Guy performed CPR and provided mechanical ventilation, and Nichols had a pulse by the time he arrived at the hospital, the paramedic said.
Guy said Long and Sandridge did not say if they had checked Nichols’ pulse and heart rate, and they did not report if they had given him oxygen. When asked by one of Bean’s lawyers whether that information would have been helpful in treating Nichols, Guy said yes.
Long and Sandridge were fired for violating fire department policies after Nichols died. They have not been criminally charged.
The five officers also have been charged with second-degree murder in state court, where they pleaded not guilty. Mills and Martin are expected to change their pleas.
Federal prosecutors have previously recommended a 40-year sentence for Martin. A date has not been set in state court yet.
Nichols worked for FedEx, and he enjoyed skateboarding and photography. The city of Sacramento, where Nichols grew up, named a skatepark in his honor. “Tyre fell in love with skateboarding at a young age and it wasn’t long before it became a part of his lifestyle,” states the resolution approved by the city council. He had a tattoo of his mother’s name.
“Tyre Nichols’ family have been praying for justice and accountability from the very beginning of this tragedy,” Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, the civil rights attorneys representing Nichols’ family, said in a statement when the trial began.
Boeing’s CEO said Wednesday that the company will begin furloughing “a large number” of employees to conserve cash during the strike by union machinists that began last week.
Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg said the people who would be required to take time off without pay starting in coming days include executives, managers and other employees based in the U.S.
“While this is a tough decision that impacts everybody, it is in an effort to preserve our long-term future and help us navigate through this very difficult time,” Ortberg said in a company-wide message to staff.
Boeing didn’t say how many people will face rolling furloughs, but the number is expected to run into the tens of thousands. The aerospace giant had 171,000 employees at the start of the year.
About 33,000 Boeing factory workers in the Pacific Northwest began a strike Friday after rejecting a proposal to raise pay by 25% over four years. They want raises of at least 40%, the return of a traditional pension plan and other improvements in the contract offer they voted down.
Scott Brauer / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The strike is halting production of several airplane models including Boeing’s best-selling plane, the 737 Max. The company gets more than half of the purchase price when new planes are delivered to buyers, so the strike will quickly hurt Boeing’s cash flow.
Ortberg said selected employees will be furloughed for one week every four weeks while retaining their benefits. The CEO and other senior executives will take pay cuts during the duration of the strike, he said, without stating how deep the cuts will be.
All work related to safety, quality, customer support and certification of new planes will continue during the furloughs, he said, including production of 787 Dreamliner jets, which are built by nonunion workers in South Carolina.
Ortberg said in a memo to employees that the company is talking to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers about a new contract agreement that could be ratified.
“However, with production paused across many key programs in the Pacific Northwest, our business faces substantial challenges and it is important that we take difficult steps to preserve cash and ensure that Boeing is able to successfully recover,” he said.
Boeing’s chief financial officer warned employees earlier this week that temporary layoffs were possible.
The company, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, but has most of its commercial-airplanes business located in the Pacific Northwest, is also cutting spending on suppliers, freezing hiring and eliminating most travel.
Despite two full days of talks assisted by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the union said Wednesday that no resolution had been reached and no additional negotiations were scheduled, according to CBS Seattle affiliate KIRO-TV.
Striking workers are picketing at several locations in the Seattle area, Oregon and California. The union, which recommended the offer that members later rejected by a 96% vote, is surveying the workers to learn what they want in a new contract. The union’s last strike at Boeing, in 2008, lasted about two months.
If the walkout doesn’t end soon, Boeing’s credit rating could be downgraded to non-investment or junk status, which would make borrowing more expensive. Shortly after the walkout began Friday, Moody’s put Boeing on review for a possible downgrade, and Fitch said a strike longer than two weeks would make a downgrade more likely.
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