Maui emergency chief quits after failing to activate wildfire alarm as death toll hits 111
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: News Now / PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
The emergency chief on the Hawaiian island of Maui has resigned amid criticism that emergency sirens were not activated soon enough during devastating wildfires.
Herman Andaya stepped down from the position, citing 'health reasons', according to a Facebook post by the County of Maui.
"Given the gravity of the crisis we are facing, my team and I will be placing someone in this key position as quickly as possible and I look forward to making that announcement soon," Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said in the post.
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Maui has a sophisticated system encompassing 80 sirens around the island which are sounded in monthly tests. However, on the day the wildfires struck the island, the sirens remained quiet.
Residents of the island are now claiming that lives could have been saved if there had been a stronger emergency response.
Maui Emergency Management Agency boss Andaya has defended the decision not to sound the siren. Earlier this week, Andaya claimed that he had been concerned that sounding the siren would have caused people to move to higher ground on the island where they could have run into the path of the blaze.
This is because the sirens are more commonly sounded to indicate a tsunami, so could have caused confusion about the nature of the emergency.
However, residents of Lahaina told the BBC they rejected this explanation and that the siren could have provided an early warning of the approaching danger from the fires.
At least 111 people are confirmed to have died in the fires while hundreds of people are still missing.
Many people were at their homes when the fires started spreading and had been without without power due to the winds caused from Hurricane Dora. While a text alert was sent out to people, this was missed by many who did not have any signal when the warning went out.
Sherlyn Pedroza, 20, lost her family home in Lahaina to the fires. She told the BBC: "The sirens should have been sounded.
"It would have alerted at least some people stuck at their house - work was off, school was off - it would have alerted them to get out."
Ronnia Pilapil, 38, tried to fight off as flames consumed his family home with a garden hose, but the wind became so strong it blew the water back in his face. In the end the home was destroyed by the fire.
He said: "People died trapped in their homes. That's all I'm thinking about."
Despite the disaster few people indicated that they were making plans to leave the island. The determination to stay in their home comes as previous years have seen many native Hawaiians priced out of their own homes.
Now they are focussed on rebuilding the community shattered by the wildfires.
If you would like to donate to the Hawaii Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund, which is supporting communities affected by the wildfires, click here for more information.
You can also donate to the American Red Cross, which helps provide food, medical supplies, shelter and water to those impacted.
Find out about other ways to help here.