(DCWatchdog.com) – A new drone video from Lahaina on Maui shows a post-apocalyptic landscape of utter devastation following last week’s catastrophic wildfires on Hawaii’s second-largest island.
You can watch the video at the end of this post.
The mind-blowing footage filmed last Friday was shared on the X platform, formerly Twitter, by Breitbart News, demonstrating that Lahaina, which had a resident population of nearly 13,000 people, has been almost completely wiped out by the blaze.
The video was posted just as the confirmed official death toll from the disastrous calamity reached 110. Unfortunately, it will likely grow several times as some 1,000 people remain unaccounted for, and no survivors are expected.
On Wednesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency opened its first disaster recovery center on Maui, which is supposed to inform residents about assistance and aid applications, according to FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell.
She said President Joe Biden would go to Lahaina on Monday to inspect the damage and relief efforts and “bring hope,” as cited by AP.
During a news conference, Maui Emergency Management Agency administrator Herman Andaya sought to fight off criticism for not sounding the island’s sirens during the gigantic blaze.
“We were afraid that people would have gone mauka,” he said, using a Hawaiian word meaning “toward the mountains or inland.”
“If that was the case then they would have gone into the fire,” he added.
The report points out that after a 1946 tsunami that claimed over 150 lives, Hawaii created the world’s most extensive system of outdoor alert sirens.
However, those were designed to help escape tsunamis and were never used for alerts about wildfires – even though the Maui siren system’s website says they could be used for that purpose.
Public outrage over the disaster has featured criticism of local and state officials because of the shortage of water for fighting the fire and inadequate evacuation efforts during which many people were trapped in traffic jams just as the blaze swept over them.
According to Avery Dagupion, whose family’s home was obliterated, Lahaina’s residents weren’t warned in time to leave, and local officials even told them the danger had subsided.
The angry local man stressed that on August 8, Maui Mayor Richard Bissen informed the fire had been contained when it exploded several hours later.
According to Dagupion, Bissen tricked people into a false sense of safety, so he and others now mistrust officials’ relief efforts.
Here is the video:
Drone footage of Lahaina, Hawaii, taken last Friday shows the devastation and scope of the fires that ravaged the region last week. pic.twitter.com/5LjZsYJ6S4
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 16, 2023
