2023-08-13 04:55:00
The devastating forest fire that devastated a town in the US archipelago of Hawaii this week leaves at least eighty dead, the Maui county authorities reported Friday night, and the Justice opened an investigation into the handling of the crisis, questioned by the population.
“The death toll stands at eighty,” Maui County reported in its latest regular situation update, adding that 1,418 people were evacuated and taken to emergency shelters.
Criticism for the official reaction to the disaster is growing stronger, so Hawaii’s attorney general, Anne Lopez, announced the opening of an investigation into how the crisis was handled.
Residents have complained that there were no warnings about the fire, which trapped people in the town.
Lopez said he will undertake “a thorough review of critical decision-making and policies in place” in the area.
In Lahaina, a town on the west coast of Maui popular with tourists, dazed residents searched through the blackened remains of houses for belongings that had survived the flames.
Almost nothing remains of the shops, hotels, buildings and restaurants that made the charm of this marine town of 13,000 inhabitants. A majestic banyan tree, a tourist attraction, was caught in the flames but appears to have survived and stands alone amid the ruins.
Maui registered power outages and the 911 emergency number stopped working in some areas of the island, while fire alert sirens were not activated.
The alerts, usually transmitted by phone, could not be received because “there was no network” of telecommunications working and “clearly, we did not provide backup solutions to ensure the safety of the inhabitants,” admitted yesterday Jill Tokuda, a legislator from the Democratic Party of Hawaii. . “We underestimated the danger and speed of the fire,” she lamented. The death toll exceeds that of the 1960 tsunami, which left 61 dead on the island of Hawaii.
Just because of the fire in Lahaina, the cost of rebuilding is already estimated at more than $5.5 billion. Yesterday the firefighters continued to fight the fire in the city.
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