The Maui emergency director evidently couldn’t take the heat and ran from the kitchen. 

The head of the Maui Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) resigned on Thursday amid growing criticism over the Hawaiian island’s response to the devastating wildfires that killed over 100 people.
Maui County said in a Facebook post that MEMA Administrator Herman Andaya had submitted his resignation, citing “health reasons.”

Yes, “health reasons.” That is why he’s resigning. He can’t take the heat for his bad decisions and is the first head on the chopping block. Or, he just cut and ran because he doesn’t want to be held accountable for his bad decisions.

There is an entire historic fishing village in Maui that is no more. It’s all gone, except for a church that the fires decided to leave standing. It will take years and billions to rebuild, yet the historic buildings, the stores and restaurants that were there may be rebuilt, but won’t be the same. 

Right now, what the citizens of Lahaina need is people stepping up to help. Yet the government is getting in their way. As are greedy developers who are swooping in well before the ashes are cold. 

“People are right now traumatized,” said Green. “Please don’t approach them with an offer to buy land. Please don’t approach their families to tell them that they are going to be better off if they make a deal, because we’re not going to allow it.”

Lahaina, the former historic capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, is a seaside town of 12,000 on West Maui. Officials have said it could cost more than $5 billion to rebuild after the wildfires, which killed at least 111 people and wiped out much of the town.

A historic town, that has been destroyed by wildfires. Yet the REACTION by those in charge of dealing with the wildfires should be the story here. A power company who didn’t cut the power. They’ve had YEARS to watch and learn from the California and PG&E fires. But did Hawaiian Electric shut off the power? No. Why? Well…

Hawaiian Electric has declined to comment in detail about the fires. But the company’s chief executive, Shelee Kimura, said at a news conference on Monday that the company did not have a program that could shut off power pre-emptively to prevent wildfires. She said such a program would have required coordination with emergency workers. Power shut-offs would have made it impossible for people to use medical equipment, water pumps and other essential devices.

Ok, yes. Except there are now multiple reports of the fact that water flow was refused.

“At around 6:00 p.m., we received CWRM’s approval to divert more water,” Tremble wrote. “By then, we were unable to reach the siphon release to make the adjustments that would have allowed more water to fill our reservoirs.

“We watched the devastation unfold around us without the ability to help. We anxiously awaited the morning knowing that we could have made more water available to MFD if our request had been immediately approved,” he said.

The guy in charge of water flow during normal operations and times of emergency has an …interesting take on water and the use of it. 

Hawaiian official M. Kaleo Manuel refused to release water in Maui as the fire raged

Manuel is deputy director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources

Here he is explaining that water should be revered, not used:pic.twitter.com/iZ6PvghwqN

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 16, 2023

So what in the world was Emergency Management Director Herman Andaya doing? Attending a highfalutin conference in Waikiki! 

After a week of being noticeably absent from all news conferences Maui County Emergency Management Agency Director Herman Andaya addressed media for the first time Wednesday.

During a question-and-answer period, he acknowledged he was not on Maui last Tuesday.

“I was in Oahu attending a conference,” he said.

Remember how Ted Cruz was roasted six ways to Sunday for vacationing while the floods hit Houston? But now, THIS guy gets to come back to Maui after the fires are done, and says he didn’t turn on the sirens because, he who has ZERO emergency management experience who thinks ALL the citizens of Maui are so damned stupid that, when they hear a siren, they will run TO the signs of danger?

When the death toll rose to 111 on Wednesday, Andaya defended not sounding the sirens during the blaze, saying authorities were “afraid that people would have gone mauka,” a Hawaiian navigational term that could mean toward the mountains or inland.

Wow. That’s pretty damned condescending of him given the scope of this disaster. Yet, that is exactly what he believes. 

In meetings in 2019, 2020 and 2021, Herman Andaya, the administrator of the Maui County Emergency Management Agency, repeatedly called sounding the civil service sirens “a last resort,” according to meeting transcripts of the county’s public safety commission.

Well, it wasn’t the last resort, it was NO resort. You know who is stepping up? Those who live and work on Maui. Those who are Hawaiians and Americans. 

People all over Maui are running themselves into a state of exhaustion trying to find the missing, comb through the rubble to find any treasures that didn’t get burned, battle FEMA who are telling people NO immediately after claims are filed, and working 24/7 to fly or boat in resources.

Meanwhile our government betters give Maui a pittance and hand Ukraine billions. 

Feature Photo Credit: Heat, flames, temperature via iStock, cropped and modified