Maui authorities defend not using sirens for wildfire

Описание: (17 Aug 2023)
FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4449343

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wailuku, Hawaii - 16 August 2023
HEADLINE: Maui authorities defend not using sirens for wildfire
1. Officials arriving at news conference
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Herman Andaya, Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator:
The state-owned siren system is a tool that we can use and we've used in the past. However, in a wildland fire incident, the system has not been used either in Maui or in other jurisdictions around the state."
++WHITE FLASH++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Herman Andaya, Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator:
"Reporter: Do you regret not sounding the sirens?
Andaya: I do not."
++WHITE FLASH++
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Herman Andaya, Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator:
"The public is trained to seek higher ground in the event that the siren is sounded, in fact on the website of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency the following guideline is provided. If you are in a low lying area near the coastline, evacuate to high grounds and then vertically to the fourth floor and higher of a concrete building. Alerts may also come in the form of a wireless emergency alert. Have you sounded the siren that night were afraid that people would have gone mauka (up). And if that was the case, then they would have gone into the fire. And so that is the reason why our protocol has been to use WEA and EAS, by the way, I should also note that there are no sirens, mauka or on the mountainside where the fire was spreading down. So even if you sounded the siren you would not have saved those people under the mountainside."
++ENDS ON SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
The head of the Maui's emergency agency said on Wednesday he had “no regret” that sirens weren't sounded to warn people about encroaching wildfires.

Herman Andaya, Maui Emergency Management Agency administrator, defended not sounding the sirens during the fire.

“We were afraid that people would have gone mauka,” he said, using the Hawaiian directional term that can mean toward the mountains or inland. “If that was the case then they would have gone into the fire.”

There are no sirens in the mountains, where the fire was spreading downhill.

Hawaii created what it touts as the largest system of public safety outdoor alert sirens in the world after a 1946 tsunami that killed more than 150 on the Big Island.

Andaya said the sirens are primarily meant to warn about tsunamis.

The website for the Maui siren system says they may be used to alert for wildfires.

With the death toll rising by four since Tuesday to 110, a mobile morgue unit with additional coroners arrived in Hawaii on Tuesday to help with the grim task of sorting through remains.

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