US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he and First Lady Jill Biden would soon visit the site of a devastating wildfire in Hawaii, but were waiting so as not to interfere with the rescue effort underway.
“My wife Jill and I are going to travel to Hawaii as soon as we can. That’s what I’ve been talking to the governor about; I don’t want to get in the way. I’ve been to too many disaster areas,” Biden said at the beginning of a speech at a wind and electric power manufacturing plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday.
“But I want to go, make sure we’ve got everything they need,” he added. “Want to make sure we don’t disrupt the ongoing recovery efforts.”
Biden called the wildfire on Maui “devastating,” noting that the death toll as of Tuesday had risen to 99 people, making it the deadliest wildfire in the United States in nearly a century. He said he has “reassured” Hawaii Governor Josh Green that his government will have Washington’s support.
“It’s painstaking work, it takes time, and its nerve wracking,” Biden said.
“All that area they’ve got to plow up, they can’t do it now because they don’t know how many bodies are in there; they don’t know what’s left,” the President added.
The fire last week exploded thanks to high winds caused by an offshore hurricane that passed several hundred miles to the south, growing in just a couple of hours into a conflagration that consumed 3.39 square miles of the 727-square-mile island, including 80% of the historic city of Lahaina. The high winds also blasted smoke sideways, frustrating evacuation efforts in the town of 15,000 and making it impossible for firefighters to drop water on the flames.
Photos from the aftermath of the fire show dozens of automobiles charred by the flames as they crowded the roads out of town. More than 2,000 structures were destroyed, and reconstruction efforts could top $6 billion, according to official estimates. Some 1,000 people remain missing amid the chaos, in which thousands fled the island or sought refuge in government shelters, while those closer to the flames jumped into the sea to escape.
Burnt out cars line the sea walk after the wildfire on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens sounded before people ran for their lives from wildfires on Maui that killed multiple people and wiped out a historic town. Instead, officials sent alerts to mobile phones, televisions and radio stations — but widespread power and cellular outages may have limited their reach.
© AP Photo / Rick Bowmer
Biden Response Criticized
Biden’s response to the destruction thus far has been heavily criticized, including on Sunday when he told a reporter he had “no comment” on the disaster. On the day Lahaina was destroyed, he incorrectly told another journalist he had already declared an emergency on Maui - he has since signed such a declaration.
On Monday, Biden rolled out a social media thread describing the aid his administration was giving to the Maui victims, including being placed in temporary housing at hotels by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and a cash payment for survivors.
“We're laser-focused on getting aid to survivors, including Critical Needs Assistance: a one-time $700 payment per household offering relief during an unimaginably difficult time,” Biden said.
According to CostofLive.com, a website that tracks the prices of typical basic commodities in different locales, the average cost of living on Maui once housing and utilities are excluded is about $1,175 per month.
Describing it as a “whole-of-government response effort,” the White House posted a fact sheet expounding its actions on Maui, including deploying 500 federal personnel and massive amounts of food, water, blankets, and beds.
Power Company Blamed
A class-action lawsuit filed over the weekend by several survivors of the fire alleges that equipment belonging to Maui Electric, a subsidiary of the Hawaii Electric power company, was responsible for sparking the fire.
“We allege that many of the regulatory laws that require maintenance of equipment were broken,” James Frantz, chief executive of the Frantz Law Group, one of several law firms involved in the suit, told US media. “There’s got to be some accountability.”
According to data from Whisker Labs, a private company that monitors the US electric grid for potential fire-triggering incidents, told US media that they observed a pronounced, 8-second-long dip in voltage early on Maui the morning of August 7, when the fire is believed to have occurred.
Bob Marshall, co-founder and chief executive of Whisker Labs, said that eight seconds “is an eternity in electrical grid time … Something on the grid was very unhappy for eight seconds and trying to recover from a shock.”
Other electrical companies, including Pacific Gas & Electric in California, have been found responsible for numerous deadly wildfires sparked by their equipment, which often occurred after the electrical provider decided not to preemptively cut power ahead of weather likely to damage its equipment or spark a fire, such as high winds.
Shelee Kimura, the chief executive of Hawaiian Electric, told US media on Monday that the company didn’t have a shutoff plan because water pumps and medical devices on the island are dependent on the electricity the company provides.
“In Lahaina, the electricity powers the pumps that provide the water - and so that was also a critical need during that time,” Kimura said. “There are choices that need to be made - and all of those factors play into it.”