The reality of the situation on the ground in Maui is not getting to the mainstream American public.

The sheer numbers should be overwhelming on their own, and yet the gravity of those numbers is getting lost in translation. At current count, the death toll in Maui stands at 115, with around 850 to 1000 people still missing, unaccounted for, or unidentified (those numbers fluctuate depending on the local source). Let’s take 1000 as a starting number of missing and dead total. The 2020 population of Lahaina was 12,702. While not all the deaths occured in Lahaina, a majority did. If we assume some margin for error, we can estimate with just these numbers that somewhere between five to eight percent of the total population of Lahaina was killed in the wildfires. In contrast, if five percent of the population of New York City had been killed in the 9/11 attacks, with the Census Bureau saying that the population of New York City in 2000 was a little over 8 million people, the death toll would have been 400,000 people. Everyone in Lahaina has either lost someone, or knows someone who was lost in the wildfires.

And officials are admitting that not everyone will be found.

As of Tuesday, two weeks after the fast moving fire burned down much of Lahaina, the death toll is at 115. The remains that have been identified is at 43. And the number of “unaccounted for” is between 1,000 and 1,100, according to officials.”

During a press conference Tuesday, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier was blunt: “Please understand this. Once the search is done, I can’t guarantee nor can anyone say we got everybody. We are going to do our darndest and make every effort to do that.”

He noted that on 9/11 many people were not recovered. More than 20 years later, that number stands at 1,106.”

“We don’t have that type of devastation with the towers like you saw there. We have an entire town that’s destroyed,” Pelletier said.”

The search efforts have now moved into the more difficult phase of multi-family, multi-floor buildings in which structures are not sound, with some floors pancaked on top of each other.”

Pelletier brought a map to the press conference with black dots showing the areas that have been searched. He said it will not end until every area damaged by the fire has been searched.”

“We are going to do it right. We are not going to do it fast. We are not going to be in a rush,” the chief said. “We got one chance. And when this is all said and done, realistically, let’s be honest here, we’re going to have a number of confirmed [dead] and we’re going to have a number of presumed [dead].”

The sheer scale of the loss is being lost in the media, who are busy avoiding Maui because it would reflect badly on Democrats. We are talking about Hurricane Katrina levels of death in a much smaller population and area, and the media, with rare exceptions, has little to say. One who is saying something is Fox News correspondent Will Cain, who has family and property in west Maui. His sad theory is that entire families have been killed, and no one is left to ask what became of them.

I know they are not looking for “bodies”. They are looking for DNA. Not to be too gruesome but: a piece of bone, a finger, any trace, which can be found be the dogs.

But if the number is 500-1,000 dead, it is very hard for me to reconcile the relatively low number of people…

— Will Cain (@willcain) August 23, 2023

Maybe this is is good news. Maybe the initial numbers were very pessimistic. The guys I know who were and are in Lahaina definitely attest to seeing the dead. But it’s hard for the human mind to comprehend totals especially in that devastation.

Or maybe it’s that entire…

— Will Cain (@willcain) August 23, 2023

There are two lessons that we should be learning from Maui right now. First, is that community is better, stronger, and more effective than government. The survivors have banded together and provided for each other all without help from government. Former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has been on the ground in Maui, taking supplies and a camera to the devastated areas. Her YouTube channel has gripping video of what happens when a community bands together to help one another in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

Government cannot create a community that does this for each other. And the other lesson is that you should never trust the government to protect you from every bad thing. Stephen Kruiser made this point in his most recent column.

Regarding today’s headline, I was thinking about the unquestioning faith that leftists have in the government’s ability to do the right and necessary things when the time comes. We have seen this really blossom in them since the beginning of the pandemic. If Anthony Fauci had told them all to stand outside naked until he gave the word to go back indoors and get dressed, they would have all shrieked, “BECAUSE SCIENCE!” and done it.”

The only authorities whom leftists inherently distrust are the police, and many of them are having second thoughts about that since the “defund” madness during the Saint George Floyd Summer of Window-Smashing Love. Despite the distrust, one of the Left’s go-to “You don’t need a gun!” arguments is “Just wait for the police to show up.” If there is anything we should have learned in the past few years, it’s that our personal fates — and those of our loved ones — aren’t best left to the authorities. In the case of law enforcement, it’s not because I don’t trust them, it’s because I don’t trust other authorities who are in charge of things like funding them. When resources are stretched thin, problems happen.”

“Trust the government” — at any level — isn’t a wise policy. It’s best to be ready for the worst, especially now. The more that American society breaks down due to the failure of the bureaucracy and our increasingly pro-criminal institutions, the wiser it is for us to do everything we can to protect the ones we love.”

Kruiser makes this point in the context of the Second Amendment, but the reality is that it applies to almost every aspect that government controls. We have now all seen in Maui the massive failures that occurred when people who got their emergency management job treated it like a cushy sinecure instead of serious business, and then promptly quit when disaster actually happened, or when those more concerned with “water equity” are then asked to help fight a raging wildfire. That guy, M. Kaleo Manuel, has now been “reassigned” but now that “reassignment” has triggered a lawsuit. There are some instances within the last week of COVID mask mandates returning. After all that we have been through, you really think that government is capable of stopping an airborne virus by demanding that we all wear masks again? Hard pass. And as far as personal safety is concerned, we all know that when seconds count, the police are minutes away – if they come at all due to staffing shortages.

Continue to pray for and support the people of Maui as their needs arise. But take their lesson to heart. In the deepest and darkest tragedy, government cannot support you. The best they can do is throw $700 at you and find you some shelter. Community and family is where true support can be found. The survivors in Lahaina know that, and are banding together to support themselves. If the worst should come, are we all prepared to do the same?

Featured image: aftermath of the Lahaina wildfire, taken on August 15, 2023 by State Farm on Flickr, cropped, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)