August 11, 2023 Maui wildfire news

Hawaii's governor has ordered a comprehensive review of the state's actions in the hours after devastating wildfires broke out on the islands earlier this week, including why warning sirens were not used to alert residents on Maui.

Green said emergency officials were particularly challenged by the fact that the flames burning near Lahaina — which ultimately built into a firestorm that razed nearly all of the historic town — had died down for a period of time before suddenly reigniting, and firefighters had shifted their focus to other areas on the island.

"The telecommunications were destroyed very rapidly" at that point, Green said, meaning that the tight-knit community was unable to alert one another by phone, as they typically do when there is an emergency. "That communication was cut off," the governor said.

Green said he isn't going to "make any excuse for anyone," but that multiple fires burning at once had created a "very fluid situation across the islands."

Despite those challenges, "we will do all that we can to find out how to protect our people more going forward," Green said.

Some context: Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said Friday that Maui’s warning sirens were not activated.

The statewide public safety warning system has about 400 sirens to alert residents to tsunamis and other natural disasters, according to an agency spokesperson, but "nobody at the state and nobody at the county attempted to activate those sirens based on our records," he said.  

Other layers of the emergency warning system were triggered, however, including mobile phone alerts and messages on televisions and radio stations.

A CNN review of state and local emergency planning documents has also revealed that Hawaii officials had underestimated the deadly threat of wildfires, as recent reports warned officials that funding and preparation for the natural disaster was insufficient.

There are now 59 confirmed deaths from the devastating wildfires in Maui, according to Hawaii Gov. Josh Green.

The new number is up from the previous confirmed toll of 55 deaths.

All of those deaths occurred out in the open, not inside buildings, "as people were trying to escape the fire," Green told CNN on Friday.

He said that number is expected to climb as search efforts are being conducted. 

The federal government has gone into disaster response mode after wildfires destroyed Lahaina on the island of Maui in Hawaii earlier this week.

President Joe Biden issued a federal disaster declaration on Thursday and promised to send whatever is needed to help the recovery.

"We're working as quickly as possible to fight those fires and evacuate residents and tourists. In the meantime, our prayers are with the people of Hawaii, but not just our prayers: every asset that we have will be available to them," Biden said as he began remarks at a Veterans Affairs medical center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Here’s what we know the federal government has deployed to Hawaii in response to the wildfires so far:

Some of Hawaii's congressional delegation will travel to Maui tomorrow with Small Business Administrator Isabella Guzman and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.

The delegation, according to a source familiar with the matter, tells CNN that the focus is twofold: Ensuring that the immediate emergency is dealt with while also helping educate the Biden administration on the long-term support that will be needed not only to rebuild, but to also protect local businesses as the tourism industry takes a serious hit. 

Tourism accounts for about 40% of the Maui economy, the source said, and many of the businesses have just recovered from the effects of Covid, which at least was bolstered by federal support programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program. 

The source told CNN that the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue team is now on site in Maui – and it will deal with the immediate search and rescue operation.

Maui’s warning sirens were not activated when the Lahaina fire began on Tuesday, records show, according to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.

But other layers of the emergency warning system were triggered, including mobile phone alerts and messages on televisions and radio stations, spokesperson Adam Weintraub told CNN on Friday.

The statewide public safety warning system has about 400 sirens to alert residents to tsunamis and other natural disasters, he said. 

On Maui, the second largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, there are 80 sirens, according to the county website. 

"It was largely a function of how fast the flames were moving,” he said of the failure to trigger the vaunted all-hazard emergency siren system. “They were trying to coordinate response on the ground, and they had already issued these other alert systems." 

When Hawaii officials released a report last year ranking the natural disasters most likely to threaten state residents, tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic hazards featured prominently. Near the bottom of a color-coded chart, the state emergency management agency described the risk of wildfires to human life with a single word: "low."

A year and a half later, the catastrophic fires that engulfed Maui and the historic town of Lahaina this week have already become the state's deadliest natural disaster in more than six decades, with a fatality count of 55 that is expected to rise. 

Hawaii officials underestimated the deadly threat of wildfires even as they acknowledged a lack of necessary resources to mitigate them, according to a CNN review of state and local emergency planning documents that show how ill-prepared the state was for the disaster. 

One Maui County report on wildfire prevention from 2021 stated that while the number of acres consumed by wildfires had spiked, funds to prevent and mitigate them were "inadequate." The report also stated that the county fire department's strategic plan included "nothing about what can and should be done to prevent fires" — in what it called a "significant oversight."

The report recommended a thorough risk assessment of fire hazards, but it's not clear whether officials heeded the recommendation. 

Other reports over the past five years show authorities knew the risk of fires was increasing and could be exacerbated by hurricane-force winds — like the Lahaina blaze was.

The state emergency management agency's public resources webpage also lays out clear, bullet-point recommendations of what residents should do in the event of a hurricane, tsunami, flash flood or earthquake. At the bottom of the page, the agency includes two short paragraphs about wildfires — with no similar advice on ways to stay safe.

Hawaii and Maui County officials didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Friday as disaster response efforts continued.

 Read the full investigation

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée are pledging $100 million to recovery efforts in Maui, Lauren Sánchez announced on her Instagram account Friday.

Bezos and Sánchez have been together since 2019 and were engaged earlier this year, a source told CNN in May.

Bezos is the executive chair of the Amazon board of directors and owns the Washington Post.

Twenty-five school buses are being used to transport visitors out of western Maui to Kahului Airport on the island, the County of Maui said in a video post of the convoy.

On Thursday, more than 1,200 visitors took advantage of the shuttles from Ka'anapali hotel areas to Kahului Airport, the county said. 

In all, about 15,000 visitors left on flights departing Maui that day, according to the county.

Firefighters are still working to put out flareups and contain fires in several areas, according to the post. A search and rescue team and other personnel from the Honolulu Fire Department have also arrived, it said.

Dozens of people have died in the raging wildfires that torched the Hawaiian island of Maui – and officials expect the toll to rise.

"We have not yet searched in the interior of the buildings,” Mayor Richard Bissen said Friday.

Much of Lahaina, a touristic and economic hub of 9,000 people, has been destroyed, and hundreds of families have been displaced. Hundreds of structures have also been impacted, including several historical sites that date to the 1800s.

See more satellite images taken on June 25 and August 9 that show an overview of Lahaina Square and outlets.